Foundations Their Power And Influence By Rene A Wormse

RENE A. WORMSER

FOUNDATIONS: THEIR POWER
AND INFLUENCE

FOUNDATIONS:

THEIR POWER
AND INFLUENCE

BY

ren£ a. wormser

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1958 BY —

THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY. NEW YORK

Copyright 1958 by
Ren6 A. Wormser

Library of Congress Card Number 57*8863
First printing, 1 958, by Devin-Adair.

Second printing by Angriff Press, 1977,
with permission of Devin-Adair.

Third printing by Covenant House Books, 1993,
with permission of Angriff Press.

ASSOCIATES

Post Office Box 590 * San Pedro, CA 90733

ISBN 0-925591-28-9

PREFACE

The most difficult assignment of my thirty years in the Con-
gress of the United States was the chairmanship of the Special
Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations, informally re-
ferred to as the “Reece Committee.” This investigation required
embarrassingly close scrutiny of the intellectual activities sup-
ported by the great and highly respected American names of Car-
negie, Rockefeller, and Ford. As a minority member of the Cox
Committee, which in the previous Congress had attempted but
virtually abandoned this project, I had sensed the power that
would spring up in opposition to a complete investigation.

The obstacles were obvious from the first. We knew that the in-
fluential “liberal” press, characterized by The New York Times,
the New York Herald Tribune, and the Washington Post-Times
Herald, would throw its editorial power against the Committee.
We knew that even the bulk of the conservative press could not
be unmindful of the enormous power of these foundations. We
knew that many prominent educators, regardless of what they felt,
could not be unmindful of the dependency of their institutions
upon continued largess from the foundations involved. We knew
that the group of prominent men whose decisions would have to
be judged extended even to intimates of the White House.

But I felt that the work of the Cox Committee left several im-
portant unanswered questions, of which the gravest was: to what
extent, if any, are the funds of the large foundations aiding and

v

vi PREFACE

abetting Marxist tendencies in the United States and weakening
the love which every American should have for his way of life?

So we set out to find the answers. We wanted to explore the
problems of foundations by examining their actions, not their
statements for the public. We felt that there are involved in the
concepts under which foundations operate and grow in the
United States certain dangers for the public welfare. We were not
blind to the undoubted merits of the contributions of numerous
tax-exempt foundations to worth-while causes. It was our in-
tention to find the factual basis for preserving their constructive
functions and at the same time for supplying guidance for future
legislation and administrative action against the use of foundation
power for political ends. The story of that adventure, of what we
found, and of the harassments to which we were subjected, is
included in this book by Ren6 A. Wormser, who was general
counsel to the committee of which I was chairman and is widely
recognized in America and Europe as outstanding in the field of
estate planning and taxation. The book contributes essentially,
however, the philosophical and juridical reflections of this dis-
tinguished lawyer, based upon the material our committee dis-
closed and upon other data which have appeared since the
closing of our inquiry. He discusses problems of foundation ad-
ministration and control which are grave indeed and has ren-
dered a great service in preparing this sober and thoughtful work.

BRAZILLA CARROLL REECE

INTRODUCTION

In his column in the New York Daily Netos of December 21,
1954, John O’Donnell said that the Reece Committee had the
“almost impossible task” of telling “the taxpayers that the incredi-
ble was, in fact, the truth.” “The incredible fact,” he continued
“was that the huge fortunes piled up by such industrial giants as
John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Ford were to-
day being used to destroy or discredit the free-enterprise system
which gave them birth.”

It is not easy to investigate foundations, not even for Congress
to attempt it: the giant foundations are powerful and have power-
ful friends. A special committee was created by the House of
• Representatives of the 83rd Congress to investigate tax-exempt or-
ganizations. It is generally referred to as the “Reece Committee”
after its chairman, Congressman B. Carroll Reece of Tennessee.
It was successor, in a way, to the “Cox Committee,” created by the
previous Congress. The Reece Committee had perhaps the most
hazardous career of any committee in the history of Congress.*
It survived its many perils, however, to bring to the attention of
Congress and the people grave dangers to our society.

. These dangers relate chiefly to the use of foundation funds
for political ends; they arise out of the accumulation of substan-
tial economic power and of cultural influence in the hands of a

•See Appendix B for the Story of the Reece Committee. The Committee'*

findings are quoted in Appendix A,

vii

viil INTRODUCTION

class of administrators of tax-exempt funds established in per-
petuity. An “£lite” has thus emerged, in control of gigantic finan-
cial resources operating outside of our democratic processes,
which is willing and able to shape the future of this nation and
of mankind in the image of its own value concepts. An unparal-
leled amount of power is concentrated increasingly in the hands
of an interlocking and self-perpetuating group. Unlike the power
of corporate management, it is unchecked by stockholders; un-
like the power of government, it is unchecked by the people; un-
like the power of churches, it is unchecked by any firmly es-
tablished canons of value.

This book grew out of my conviction that some of the materials
examined by the Reece Committee, for which I acted as general
counsel, deserve broader circulation. My own reflections, based
upon the committee’s work and upon additional material and con-
tinued studies, might also contribute to a sharpening of the is-
sues, which deserve wide public consideration.

The “foundations” which the Committee investigated did not
all carry that label, In addition to primary sources of foundation
grants, such as The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Founda-
tion, and The Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Committee
examined secondary distributors of grant moneys, especially or-
ganizations such as The Social Science Research Council, The
Institute of Pacific Relations, and The American Council on
Education, which are supported by the major foundations and
used in selecting ultimate recipients. A dictionary definition of
the term “foundation” might run: “an endowed institution, cor-
poration or charity.” This would include colleges, hospitals,
churches, and other institutions of a character far different from
that of the foundations with which we are dealing. These are es-
sentially recipients of money for their own use and not in the
business of handing out grants to others. They are, in rela-
tion to the foundations, mentioned above what the consumer is
in relation to his supplier.

Limited to the types of organization we have in mind, the total
number now existing in the United States can be estimated at

INTRODUCTION ix

over 7,000. Most were created under state corporation laws;
some as trusts; a very small number by Federal charter. Accurate
statistics are impossible to obtain, but the aggregate capital o£
these foundations seems to be about nine billion dollars, their in-
come running into hundreds of millions per year. Total founda-
tion wealth is generally underestimated. Some foundations
(among them The Duke Foundation, The Ford Foundation,
The Ford Motor Company Fund, the Guggenheim foundation
and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund) report their assets on a
book-value basis — market value usually being much higher. In the
case of The Ford Foundation, the actual value of its assets turned
out to have been six times their book value. Moreover, many foun-
dations are vehicles for continued donations, whether by gift or
legacy — they are in a state of growth. Indeed, some have only
nominal capital today but will contain vast sums on the deaths of
those who created them.

While there is much overlapping, foundations might be di-
vided into three classes: those which are purely granting founda-
tions; those which use their money for their own research and
operations (operating foundations); and those which might be
called “intermediaries,0 “clearing houses/' or “retailers" for other
foundations. Some of the intermediaries have no endowment and
thus, strictly speaking, may not be “foundations"; however, they
came within the committee's scope as “tax-exempt organizations,"
because of the practice of major foundations of delegating to
them the selection of beneficiaries.

Other classifications are possible, such as those foundations
which have special purposes and those which are concerned with
general research. In his recent book, Philanthropic Foundations
Mr. F. Emerson Andrews, an executive of The Russell Sage Foun-
dation, says: “Although the foundations that can now be clas-
sified as 'general research’ probably do not exceed 150 in number,
they control more than half the assets of all foundations and are
the ones most in the public eye. To a large degree they are the
leaders and standard setters for the foundation movement."

• Russell Sage Foundation, 1956.

x INTRODUCTION

The birth rate of foundations is rapidly accelerating. The Com-
missioner of Internal Revenue so testified, as would any expert
in estate and business planning. The chief motivation in the crea-
tion of foundations has long ceased to be pure philanthropy — it is
now predominantly tax avoidance or minimization.* The chari-
table tax exemptions were intended to advance the public welfare
by offering exemption for philanthropic purposes. The increas-
ing tax burden on income and estates has greatly accelerated a
trend toward creation of foundations as instruments for the re-
tention of control over capital assets that would otherwise be lost.
The Internal Revenue Service, according to a press report/}* says
it sometimes receives up to 10,000 applications a month for tax-
free status!

The creation of a new foundation very often serves the purpose
of contributing to a favorable public opinion for the person or
corporation that endows it. Among public-relations consultants the
practice of publicly establishing the virtue of a previously de-
spised person or institution by forming a tax-exempt foundation
and beating the drum for it is quite common. Some of our largest
foundations, established before the introduction of Federal in-
come and estate taxes, were created largely to glamorize a name
not previously identified as conspicuously charitable.

Mr. Andrews, in his Philanthropic Foundations, speaks of the
mushroom growth of foundations in the past decade (1945-1956).
He attributes truly charitable motivation to many donors, and
mixed motives to others, but admits that many foundations are
created for primarily selfish reasons and sometimes for fraudulent
purposes. He sees it as obvious enough that tax reasons should
stimulate the creation of foundations, pointing out that, to the very
rich, whose income is taxed at the highest brackets, a donation to
a charitable purpose would cost in some instances only nine cents
per dollar. If gifts are made in the form of appreciated assets in-
stead of money (stocks, land, or other property that has gained in

•See The Charitable Trust (The Foundation) As on Instrument of Estate

Planning. Rend A. Wormser, 18 Ohio St. L. J. s 19 (1957).

| Scrlpps-Howard, March 13. 1957, from Washington.

INTRODUCTION xi

value since its acquisition), the donor in the highest tax brackets
will have more money left after the donation than if he himself
had liquidated the asset, paid a 25% capital-gains tax, and given
nothing awayl

Perhaps the best example of the use of foundations in estate and
business planning is offered by the largest, The Ford Foundation,
This foundation received about 90 percent of the stock of the
Ford Motor Company, all nonvoting stock. Had not the Ford fam-
ily created this foundation, it would have had to dispose of a
large part of its ownership in the Ford Company to the public,
for it is hardly possible that the family had enough liquid capital
to pay the hundreds of millions of estate taxes which would have
been due upon the deaths of two proprietors, Henry Ford and his
son Edsel. It might have been difficult to make such a public sale
without endangering their control of the company.

The foundation, however, ofEered a way out. The family, by
transferring about 90 per cent of its Ford holdings to a founda-
tion, escaped estate taxes on approximately 90 percent of its for-
tune. At the same time, it retained voting control of the company
and had the satisfaction of knowing that even the nonvoting stock
was in friendly hands. When part of the foundation’s holdings of
Ford stock was sold in 1956, after being converted into voting
stock, the distribution was carefully controlled to make sure that
no large blocks would be held by any one investor. One reason
. behind this might have been the conviction that the more Ford
stockholders there were, the more Ford customers and enthusiasts
there would be. Another motivation might have been the simple
one of not wishing any minority stockholder to acquire enough
stock to make him too interested in challenging the management.

In this manner, and by other uses of foundations, control of an
enterprise is often retained by a family, while a huge part of a
decedent's fortune is removed from death taxes. A direct dona-
tion to an existing philanthropic institution, like a college or a
church, would save the same tax, but the creation of a foundation
enables the family itself to have the pleasure, power, and satis-
faction of managing the wealth donated to “charity."

xll INTRODUCTION

There have been “business** abuses of the tax law, of course.
The Reece Committee report gave one rather shocking example
of a type of tax avoidance. This was the case of The Reid Founda-
tion, which holds millions of dollars in notes of the publishing
company which owns and publishes the New York Herald Trib-
une,, These notes were transferred to the Reid Foundation partly
by direct donation of the late Ogden M. Reid and partly by
his will, the estate thus saving a large sum in death taxes. As the
committee report said:

It is the conclusion of this Committee that what was in-
tended was a business arrangement. We conclude that the
Foundation was not to be engaged solely in charitable work,
... It was to exercise charity in behalf of the New York
Herald Tribune . It was to subordinate whatever philanthro-
pic work had been planned to the welfare of that newspaper
and the interest of the Reid family in it. It was a business
deal. There was no free gift of the notes. They were trans-
ferred pursuant to a contract under which the Foundation
agreed to assist the publishing company in its financial prob-
lem and, by inference, but clear inference, to make this
objective superior to its presumed charitable function.*

It was the committee’s opinion that no charitable exemption
should have been allowed The Reid Foundation.

The extent to which foundations are today being used — in a
manner generally similar to that of The Ford Foundation — to
solve the problem of paying death taxes when a major part of the
assets of the estate consist of stock in a closely held corporation,
largely prompted me to include this comment in an address at the
University of Chicago in

It seems to me that the ingenious legal creatures developed
by tax experts to solve the unusual social, economic, and
legal problems of the past several generations will become

• Report of the Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations
(Reece Committee), p. 9. Reference to Report throughout this book will con-
cern the report of this committee,

INTRODUCTION xill

Frankensteins, though perhaps benevolent ones. It is possi-
ble that, in fifty or a hundred years, a great part of American
industry will be controlled by pension and profit-sharing
trusts and foundations and a large part of the balance by
insurance companies and labor unions. What eventual re-
percussions may come from such a development, one can
only guess. It may be that we will in this manner reach some
form of society similar to socialism, without consciously in-
tending it. Or it may be, to protect ourselves against the
strictures which such concentrations of power can effect, that
we might have to enact legislation analogous to the Statutes
of Mortmain which, centuries ago, were deemed necessary in
order to prevent all England’s wealth from passing into the
hands of the church.

The overwhelming majority of foundations have had careers
quite beyond any criticism, and some of those which have been
most criticized have notable accomplishments to their credit. The
work of both the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations in some
fields of medicine, public health, and science, for example, de-
serves the thanks of the American people. Many unquestionably
commendable accomplishments should not, however, immunize a
foundation from criticism for mistakes involving what may be
termed a breach of trust.

It is in the fields of education, international affairs and what are
called the “social sciences” that the greatest damage can be
done to our society. For this reason the Reece Committee confined
its inquiry almost entirely to these areas.

Foundations achieve their tax-exempt status, even their initial
license to exist, because they are dedicated, in one way or another,
to the public welfare. They must be so dedicated. The state laws
which govern the creation of foundations give considerable lati-
tude. The donor is permitted to satisfy his idiosyncrasies, if he
cares to, by designating purposes limited to certain classes of
beneficiaries and certain classes of benefactions, as long as the
whole operation is truly philanthropic. The Federal tax law, in

xlv INTRODUCTION

turn, is equally generous in permitting even idiosyncratic phi-
lanthropies to qualify for tax exemption. Underlying both the
State and Federal laws applying to foundations, however, is the
concept of public dedication — a fund administered by fiduciaries
(whether called “trustees” or directors”) for public benefit.

The tax relief which foundations and their donors enjoy causes
the public to pay more taxes than would be the case if the exemp-
tions were not granted. Consequently, and because foundations
are public trusts,* the public has the right to expect those who op-
erate them to exercise the highest degree of fiduciary responsi-
bility.

A study of the place of foundations in our society calls for an
initial clarification of the method applied in such an inquiry. Ob-
viously the great variety of foundation goals and activities makes
it impossible to apply the sampling procedures so fashionable
among contemporary social scientists. One cannot arrive at a
quantitatively correct description of all foundations from exami-
nation of a selected number. Consequently* the investigator must
be satisfied with an opportunity to arrive at conclusions regarding
possible merits and demerits of foundation practices by examina-
tion of a reasonably large number of cases. The result will be a
better understanding of the principles of human behavior in-
volved in operating tax-exempt activities and a more practical
approach to the formulation and application of the law protecting
the public interest.

Limited as it was by time and money, the Reece Committee
could attempt only a partial investigation of some of the less de-
sirable features of foundation management in the United States.
Its main contribution was to expose instances in which the promo-
tion of political ends, favored perhaps by foundation managers,
had been disguised as charitable or educational activity. Political
activity of this kind endangers the future of the foundation as an
institution.

i

• Objection is sometimes made to calling a foundation a 'public trust/ How-
ever, while it is privately administered, it is public in the sense that it must
be dedicated to the public— the public is its beneficiary.

INTRODUCTION xv

The often stormy hearings of the Reece Committee stimulated
a widespread reexamination of the goals and methods of the
major foundations. In the resulting public discussion, even some
of the most stalwart supporters of the criticized foundations were
obliged to admit to certain deficiencies; indeed, some major
changes in personnel and in operating policies ensued.

The following pages are offered as a contribution towards a
better understanding of the public issues arising out of the exist-
ence of powerful tax-exempt institutions. They point to some of the
abuses of the past to illustrate the dangers inherent in the absence
of effective measures for preventing political activity by founda-
tions.

Greenwich, Conn.

RENE A. WORMSER

CONTENTS

PREFACE by brazilla carroll reece v

INTRODUCTION vii

1 THE ST UD Y OF FO UN DA TIONS g

CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION IS NOT ENOUGH 3

THE “WALSH COMMISSION*' 5

THE TEXTRON INVESTIGATION AND BUSINESS ABUSES 14

THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TAX-EXEMPT INSTITUTIONS l6
FOUNDATION RESPONSIBILITY $8

WHAT 1$ “PROPAGANDA" AND WHAT IS "EDUCATION'? 3?

WHAT IS “religious"? 37

FOUNDATION RESPONSIBILITY IN SUPPORTING SOCIAL

CHANGE 38

2 THE POWER OF THE INDIVIDUAL FO UNDA TION 41

RAMIFICATIONS OF THE POWER 41

HOW THE POWER IS ADMINISTERED 43

THE FOUNDATION BUREAUCRATS 48

THE PROBLEM OF BIGNESS 51

THE CORPORATE FOUNDATIONS 54

3 THE CON CENTRA TION OF POWER 57

INTERLOCKS 37

INTERMEDIARIES AS JOINT INSTRUMENT OF SEVERAL

FOUNDATIONS 6 1

WHAT MAKES UP THE INTERLOCK IN THE FINANCING

OF SOCIAL-SCIENCE ACTIVITIES 63

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 67

THE AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION 76

OTHER ASPECTS OF INTERLOCK 78

xvii

xvili CONTENTS

THE INFLUENCE OF FOUNDATION MANAGERS IN

THE INTERLOCK 80

4 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM 83

POLITICS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 8$

THE EXCLUSION OF THE DISSIDENT 86

FOUNDATION-FOSTERED SCIENTISM 89

THE ‘‘SOCIAL ENGINEERS” AND THE "FACT-FINDING MANIA” 90
ROCKEFELLER FINANCES DR. KINSEY’S SCIENTISM 100

"THE AMERICAN SOLDIER," PRODUCED BY THE SSRC IO5

FOUNDATIONS GENERATE "THE PROPER STUDY OF MAN-
KIND" 110

CARNEGIE PRODUCES "AN AMERICAN DILEMMA** 114

"THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES” 1 19

THE SWING TO THE LEFT 125

THE MUCKRAKING INFLUENCE OF SOME FOUNDATIONS 129

MASS RESEARCH — INTEGRATION AND CONFORMITY 1&1

5 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION 139

THE CONTROL OF EDUCATION BY FOUNDATIONS 1 39

THE BIRTH OF EDUCATIONAL RADICALISM 143

CARNEGIE FINANCES A SOCIALIST CHARTER FOR EDUCATION 1 46
THE RADICAL EDUCATORS 15 2

THE PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 155

THE COLLECTIVIST TEXTBOOKS J5^

REFERENCE WORKS l§1

THE CITIZENS EDUCATION PROJECT 1^9

SEVERAL SLOAN FOUNDATION PROJECTS X7X

6 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED 173

THE THIRD AMERICAN REVOLUTION 173

COMMUNIST PENETRATION OF FOUNDATIONS 174

SOCIALIST PENETRATION 177

FOUNDATIONS AND "SUBVERSION” 184

HELPLESSNESS OF THE CITIZEN l86

AN EXAMPLE OF FOUNDATION-SUPPORTED ANTICAPITALISM 187
THE LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 1 88

THE AMERICAN LABOR EDUCATION SERVICE 193

LEFTISTS SUPPLIED TO GOVERNMENT BY FOUNDATIONS 196

CONTENTS

XIX

7 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY soo

THE FOUNDATION COMPLEX IN "INTERNATIONALISM” 200

THE PART OF THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT 204

THE FOREIGN POLICY ASSOCIATION 208

THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 209

THE “HISTORICAL BLACKOUT*' 209

THE INSTITUTE OF PACIFIC RELATIONS 210

INTERLOCKS WITH GOVERNMENT 211

FOUNDATION-PROMOTED “GLOBALISM*' 2 1 1

THE INTERNATIONAL “EXPERTS*' 21$

PROPAGANDA FOR UN 214

THE NEA JOINS THE PARADE 2 l6

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 2 17

FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL MEDDLING 2l8

8 THE FORD FOUNDATION— GARGANTUA OF PHD

LANTHROPY 22i

A NEW POLICY? 221

THE RECENT PAST 228

THE EARLIER HISTORY OF THE FORD FOUNDATION 236

THE (FORD) BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES FUND 247

FORD EAVESDROPS ON JURIES 250

THE (FORD) FUND FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION 252

THE (FORD) FUND FOR ADULT EDUCATION 259

FORD “EDUCATES*' LABOR 264

FORD AND INTERNATIONALISM 265

THE (FORD) FUND FOR THE REPUBLIC 2^0

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FORD TRUSTEES 28 1

HAS THE FORD FOUNDATION CHANGED ITS SPOTS? 284

9 FROM HERE ON? 288

AS IT IS 288

A PLEA TO THE TRUSTEES 2gi

FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS 294

APPENDIX A: FINDINGS AND CONCLUDING OBSERVA-
TIONS OF THE REECE COMMITTEE 301

THE FINDINGS goi

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 305

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 3 1 3

XX CONTENTS

APPENDIX B: THE STORY OF THE REECE COMMITTEE 328

prelude: the creation of the cox committee 328

THE WORK OF THE COX COMMITTEE 33°

BIRTH OF THE REECE COMMITTEE 335

MANDATE TO THE COMMITTEE 337

PREPARATION FOR THE 1IEARINCS 33®

THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS 339

APPOINTMENT OF COUNSEL AND STAFF 34 1

RESEARCH STARTS 342

LIMITATIONS ON THE STUDY 343

MONEY TROUBLES 343

LOSS OF ETTINGKR AND DEHUSZAR 345

TROUBLE FOR COUNSEL 34®

MR. HAYS AND “THE WHITE HOUSE" 347

COINCIDENCES? 349

MR. HAYS AND “THE WHITE HOUSE° AGAIN 349

MR. HAYS AND THE STAFF 349

MR. HAYS AND DR. KINSEY 35 1

MR. HAYS AND FACTS FORUM 352

MR. HAYS AND THE COMMITTEE PROCEDURE 352

THE "DODD REPORT’* 354

THE WITNESSES 35®

MR. HAYS BROWBEATING A WITNESS 35®

MR. HAYS DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF 365

MR. HERRING TAKES THE STAND 366

THE DECISION IS MADE 37°

B. CARROLL REECE*S SUPPLEMENTAL STATEMENT 37 1

THE FOUNDATION STATEMENTS 377

THE PREPARATION OF THE REPORT 3®°

THE "STRAW-MEN** 3®1

APPENDIX C: REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMIT-
TEE ON THE PROPOSED OBJECTIVES
AND METHODS OF INVESTIGATION 384

INDEX 40 ^

FOUNDATIONS: THEIR POWER
AND INFLUENCE

1

THE STUDY OF
FOUNDATIONS

CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION IS NOT ENOUGH

When the 82nd Congress appointed a select committee to in-
vestigate foundations, this committee was directed to conduct a
full and complete investigation and study of educational and phil-
anthropic foundations and other comparable organizations which
are exempt from Federal income taxation. The committee, later
known as the “Cox Committee,” was instructed “to determine
which such foundations and organizations are using their re-
sources for purposes other than the purposes for which they were
established and especially to determine which such foundations
and organizations are using their resources for un-American and
subversive activities or for purposes not in the interest or tradi-
tion of the United States.”

Similarly, the Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt
Foundations and Comparable Organizations appointed by the
83rd Congress, “the Reece Committee," was instructed to make
a study of the use of such resources for “un-American and
subversive activities; for political purposes; propaganda, or at-
tempts to influence legislation.” Consequently, both House com-
mittees in their observations concentrated largely on alleged sub-
versive aspects of foundation activities.

Like all studies by Congressional committees, the investigations
took place in an atmosphere of some political passion. The clash
of personalities, outside efforts to prevent a full airing of the prob-

3

4 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

lems of foundations, the short time available for research and
hearings, and the absence of sufficient funds substantially im-
paired committee work. Yet these Congressional committees have
accomplished much. They have pointed up the importance of tax-
exempt organizations in our social structure. They have disclosed
serious weaknesses and dangers. They have exposed a great num-
ber of unexplored problems arising out of foundation activity. But
they have not finished the study which the social importance of
foundations requires.

The American foundation is a social invention, created to con-
tribute to the improvement of the public welfare. Like any in-
vention, it creates new situations, changing with the tides of our
social life. The impact of foundation programs and operations in
many of the focal areas of our civilization requires constant re-
evaluation. Congressional committees can contribute very sub-
stantially to such appraisal.

The significance of tax-exempt private organizations transcends
the importance of occasional or frequent errors of judgment com-
mitted by foundation trustees or their managers. These institu-
tions may exert political influence, support subversion, or exhibit
tendencies conflicting with our national traditions. The emergence
of richly endowed juridical persons with self-perpetuating boards
of directors, free from any formal responsibility for their policies
and actions and growing in number and wealth, deserves the full-
est attention of all who are concerned for the future of our Re-
public.

There are substantial dissimilarities between the purposes, char-
acteristics, and operators of the various organizations. A stereo-
type picture of what “the foundations” have contributed or are
guilty of, will always do injustice to some. Congressional reports,
by necessity, highlight certain features of a limited number of
tax-exempt foundations and are likely to invite generalizations
from a few explored data. But a “typical foundation” is as non-
existent as an “average man” or an “average corporation” in real
life. Furthermore, as it is with human beings and their societies,
the individual foundation itself undergoes change; what may be

THE "WALSH COMMISSION" 5

true of specific intentions and performance today may not be true
any longer tomorrow.

The emphasis of the Reece Committee on the need for further
study came from the recognition of the existence of many more
problems than the ones it touched upon. But the far-from-com-
pleted investigation did disclose sufficient instances of question-
able practices to permit an understanding of some of the general
precautions that ought to be applied to foundation management.
The Committee sought out guiding principles for future founda-
tion behavior rather than grounds for punishing past errors. If,
therefore, this study will use some of the less flattering data on
tax-exempt operations uncovered by the Congressional investiga-
tion, the purpose is not to create a stereotyped prejudice against
foundations in general. It is rather to record the possible dangers
to the public welfare and so, in the end, to serve the interest of
foundations in their continued service to the public better than
complacent silence would do,

THE "WALSH COMMISSION"

The problems of foundations are not new. They have been aired
by Congressional inquiry before. The manner of their exploration
has always reflected the concern of the day with specific dangers
to the public welfare. The Commission on Industrial Relations ex-
amined foundations more than forty years ago under a Congres-
sional Act of August 23, 1912. Its main purpose was to study
labor conditions and the treatment of workers by major industrial
firms. Starting with a study of labor exploitation, it went on to in-
vestigate concentrations of economic power, interlocking directo-
rates, and the role of the then relatively new large charitable foun-
dations (especially of Carnegie and Rockefeller) as instruments
of power concentration. The fears of foundation power prevalent
in that generation are best expressed by the statement to the Com-
mission made by a prominent lawyer and student of social prob-
lems who later became a justice of the Supreme Court.

Louis D. Brandeis testified on January 23, 1915, as to why he
was gravely concerned with the growth of concentrated economic

6 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

power. He spoke of corporate power first; then, of what appeared
to him a similar problem in relation to the large foundations. He
said:

But when a great financial power has developed, when there
exist these powerful organizations, which can successfully
summon forces from all parts of the country, which can af-
ford to use tremendous amounts of money in any conflict
to carry out what they deem to be their business principle,

and can also afford to suffer losses — you have necessarily

• *

a condition of inequality between the two contending
forces.*** The result in the cases of these large corpora-
tions, may be to develop a benevolent absolutism, but it is
an absolutism all the same; and it is that which makes the
great corporation so dangerous. There develops within the
State a state so powerful that the ordinary social and in-
dustrial forces existing are insufficient to cope with it.*

Brandeis said that foundations express a desire, a zealous purpose,
to aid humanity. But he also stated that he felt a “grave appre-
hension at times as to what might ultimately be the effect of these
foundations when the control shall have passed out of the hands
of those who at present are administering them to those who may
not be governed by the excellent intent of the creators.0 He re-
iterated his fear of abuse of power and termed the whole system
“inconsistent with our democratic aspirations.”

At these hearings, under the chairmanship of Senator Frank P.
Walsh,f a great number of other prominent witnesses appeared
and testified on their ideas and observations regarding founda-
tions.

Samuel Untermyer, counsel to the U. S. Steel Corporation and
himself a prominent philanthropist, stated his belief in the capital-
ist system. He attributed the propaganda success of socialism,
communism, and syndicalism to the blunders of capitalism. He
saw a remedy in the enlightened self-interest of capitalists that

• Walsh Commission Hearings , p. 7659.
f 64th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document 415, vol. VII.

THE "WALSH COMMISSION" 7

would lead to social reforms. Criticizing the Rockefeller, Sage,
and Carnegie foundations, he said:

The Rockefeller Foundation sought a Federal charter, but
was not satisfied with the terms it was offered by Congress.
It wanted our fundamental laws against perpetuities ignored
and repealed so far as concerned its powers and limitations.
It promptly secured from the New York State legislature
what Congress refused to grant; the Sage and Carnegie
foundations did the same. If New York had not given them
what they wanted they would have passed along from State
to State until they found a corporate habitation on their
own terms, without in the least interfering with their oper-
ating wherever they chose. This ought not to be possible.

Mr. Untermyer did not share the fear and distrust of founda-
tions expressed by others. He believed in the unselfish public
spirit of their founders and saw them doing “incalculable public
good and no harm.” He advocated, however, that they should:

(1) be organized under a uniform Federal law instead of un-
der special State charters;

(2) not be given perpetual charters, because of the possibility
that entirely different social structures and conceptions of educa-
tion in 50 years might make these institutions appear most re-
pugnant;

(3) be limited in their size;

(4) not be permitted to accumulate income.

He also advocated (5) that the government should be repre-
sented when the time comes for replacing the present trustees.

Dr. John Haynes Holmes, an eminent Protestant minister, testi-
fied to his concern with the power of the self-perpetuating foun-
dation boards:

We have here in the midst of a society supposed to be
democratic that which is essentially an autocratic system of
administration, of an institution which represents power,
which is, of course, simply stupendous, and that relationship

8 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

therefor, of the most serious character to mankind, the auto-
cratic administration on one hand and the democratic ad-
ministration [of government] upon the other.* * * §

He contended that a democratic society did not need the serv-
ices of outside agencies “to study a community from its own
standpoint and to apply remedies from funds at its disposal.” He
feared greatly the “paralysis of the possibilities of democracy”
when powerful foundations take over. Dr. Holmes, as it appears,
was an ardent advocate of cooperative socialism, and represented
what today would be called “liberalism.” He recommended ap-
pointment of foundation trustees by the government. He was so
much opposed to the large foundations that he would “rather see
democracy die of its own corruption than be favored by the au-
tocratic benefaction or service of any one particular individual.”
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., testified that as a corporate director
he had represented foundation investments as well as his family
interests on the boards of directors of several corporations. He
had given considerable study to the question of the relation of
private benevolence to social and economic conditions.^ Testify-
ing for several days, beginning on June 25, 1915; lie answered
the question whether large foundations constituted a possible
menace either to the general cause of education or to the industrial
welfare of the people. He said; “These foundations, as is true of
all modern corporations, are subject to the reserved power of
legislative bodies which created them — to modify or repeal their
charters whenever the public interests require.” J

Asked whether he saw any dangers in interlocking directorates
of foundations, he replied, “I should think on the other hand there
might be a great strength in that,” and generally spoke in favor of
multiple services of the same persons as directors of several foun-
dations^ In essence, he recognized the public’s right to know and
through legislation to control foundation activities.

• P. W7-

fP. 7849-

X P. 7854.

§ P. 7®59-

THE "WALSH COMMISSION" 9

He advocated voluntary public reports of federally chartered
foundations “on fiscal matters” but not introduction of a law re-
quiring such reports; he wanted to leave the contents of such re-
ports to the judgment of the directors and to their understanding
of the public interest. He did not think that any method of public
inspection was desirable or necessary.*

Asked about the power of foundations to influence independent
thought and action in the investigation of social conditions, Mr.
Rockefeller said there should be no public restrictions. He con-
tended that proper selection of directors would sufficiently protect
the public interest and that the financial power of large founda-
tions would be felt only in the realm of investment. He advo-
cated academic freedom and complete independence in the use of
grants by recipient educational institutions of higher learning.
Chairman Walsh was concerned lest the granting of funds for
schools might result in “persons being educated taking the view-
point, consciously or unconsciously, of the man that gave the
money or the foundation that gave the money.” f

Mr. Rockefeller, with regard to higher education, answered:
“There is a possible danger, if the giver retains any kind of con-
trol; I think it unwise.” Regarding other forms of education, how-
ever, he considered continued help in developing the middle
school system as desirable and as involving much more remote
danger.

In. 1915, when these opinions were expressed, obviously nobody
expected the emergence of intermediary organizations serving
foundations in the distribution of grants and their resulting power
in the academic world. “Progressive education,” soon to be fa-
vored by substantial support, was in its infancy; what has been
called the patronage network of Teachers College of Columbia
University had not yet conquered the organizations of the teach-
ers with the aid of tax-exempt donations.

Approving the principle of public control and, implicitly, future

• p. 7860.
t P* 7866.

10 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

Congressional study of foundations, Mr. Rockefeller said that it
was never contemplated that his father or his associates

could continue to have their influence felt; but at any time
in any generation, when the board having the charge of
such a foundation is not, in the judgment of the public, a
proper board, the legislation can introduce an amendment,
limiting, qualifying or modifying the method of electing
directors and adding at that time any restriction which it
may think desirable.

It was Mr. Rockefeller's thought to “leave each generation to put
up such barriers and safeguards as it may think necessary at
that time." #

In its final report, Mr. Basil M. Manly, the director of research
of the Commission on Industrial Relations, dealt at length with
foundation problems. Commissioners Weinstock, Ballard, and
Ashton, while dissenting and calling the report partisan and un-
fair regarding certain labor issues, concurred in its conclusions
regarding the foundations.

Concerned with the “concentration of wealth and influence,”
the report concluded from the evidence examined: that a small
number of wealthy and powerful financiers held in their hands
the final control of American industry; that control through actual
stock ownership, in spite of the large number of stockholders,
rested with a very small number of persons; and that in each
great basic industry a single large corporation dominated the
market.

In these respects the Commission set the pattern for future in-
vestigations of Big Business, among them the studies of the Tem-
porary National Economic Committee (TNEC) and many suc-
cessors. Its observations have been adopted and repeated by many
succeeding reformers, including the theorists of the New Deal,
though the changes of our economic power structure and Iegisla-

• P. 7876.

THE "WALSH COMMISSION" 11

live reforms have substantially altered the conditions of business
since 1915.

Many of the conclusions of the foundation critics of 1915 have
lost their cogency because of evolutions in the social structure.
Foundations, too, have changed. We may no longer fear them as
instruments of capitalism. Today many fear them as promoters of
big government. Yet, under totally different economic and social
conditions, the findings of 1915 are still significant. They point
to essential peculiarities of private endowments manifest in any
social climate, irrespective of the current fashions of contemporary
social criticism or of current political trends.

The report of Mr. Manly, for the majority of the Commission,
saw “the domination by the men in whose hands the final control
of a large part of American industry rests *** rapidly extended to
control the education and 'social service* of the Nation.” Refer-
ring especially to Rockefeller’s and Carnegie’s foundations, it said:

The control is being extended largely through the creation
of enormous privately managed funds for indefinite pur-
poses, hereinafter designated “foundations,” by the endow-
ment of colleges and universities, by the creation of funds
for pensioning teachers, by contributions to private charities,
as well as through controlling or influencing the public
press.*** The funds of these foundations are exempt from
taxation, yet during the life of their founders are subject
to their dictation for any purpose other than commercial
profit. In the case of the Rockefeller group of foundations,
the absolute control of the funds and of the activities of
the institutions now and in perpetuity rests with Mr. Rocke-
feller, his son, and whomsoever they may appoint as their
successors. The control of these funds has been widely pub-
lished as being in the hands of eminent educators and
publicly spirited citizens. In the case of the Rockefeller
foundations, however,*** the majority of the trustees of the
funds are salaried employees of Mr. Rockefeller or the

12 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

foundations, who are subject to personal dictation and may
be removed at any moment,

The report expresses concern that the policies of these founda-
tions "must be inevitably colored, if not controlled, to conform to
the policies” of the corporations in whose securities their endow-
ment was invested. On the reasoning that these funds were the
result of wealth created by exploiting either American workers or
American consumers, it was concluded that “the funds, therefore,
by every right, belong to the American people.” Concern was ex-
pressed about the "practically unlimited powers of these foun-
dations.”

In discussing The Rockefeller Foundation, President Schurman
of Cornell, himself a trustee of The Carnegie Foundation, said
that one of these tax-exempt organizations was free to participate
in practically any activity concerning the life and work of the na-
tion, with the exception of activities for profit. Among the per-
mitted foundation activities he listed: defense of the Republic in
time of war; economic and political reforms which the trustees
deem essential to the vitality and efficiency of the Republic in
time of peace; championship for free trade or protectionism; ad-
vocacy of socialism or individualism; underwriting the respective
programs of the Republican or the Democratic parties; introduc-
tion of Buddhism in the United States.

The absence of legally enforceable public control was seen in
the report as an important deficiency because "past experience
indicates ### that the public can be aroused only when the abuses
have become so great as to constitute a scandal.”

After listing examples of the alleged use of the Rockefeller
foundations as instruments for advancement of the Rockefeller
business interests, the report reviews the extent of the possible in-
fluence of these foundations and private endowments on institu-
tions for education and public service. Evidence in the possession
of the Commission supported the following complaints:

i. That the Bureau of Municipal Research of New York adopted

THE "WALSH COMMISSION" 13

a definite line of policy to meet the conditions imposed by Mr.
Rockefeller in connection with proposed contributions;

2. That several colleges and universities abandoned their sec-
tarian affiliations and charter clauses relating to religion in order
to secure endowments from the Carnegie Corporation.

This led the report to comment: "It would seem conclusive that
if an institution will willingly abandon its religious affiliations
through influence of these foundations , it will even more easily
conform to their will any other part of its organization or teach-
ing" *

The report concluded:

As regards the <! ‘foundations” created for unlimited general
purposes and endowed with enormous resources, their ulti-
mate possibilities arc so grave a menace, not only as regards
their own activities and influence but also the benumbing
effect which they have on private citizens and public bodies,
that if they could be clearly differentiated from other forms
of voluntary altruistic effort, it would be desirable to recom-
mend their abolition.

It was therefore recommended that Congress enact legislation
limiting the amount of funds and the exercise of power by fund
managers. Provisions against accumulation of unexpended income
and against expenditure in any year of more than 10 percent of
capital were demanded, together with rigid inspection of finances
(investment and expenditure) and complete publicity through
open reports to the Government. In addition, the report proposed
the creation of an investigatory body for the continued study of
activities of foundations and of their affiliates. Finally, the rec-
ommendations called for increased Government activity in edu-
cation and the social services to balance the power of foundations.

Commissioners John R, Commons and Florence J. Harriman,
in their separate report, requested a further investigation of foun-
dations before new legislation was adopted, They recommended

• P. 153. Emphasis supplied.

14 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

a study of endowed charities, religious organizations, universities,
and colleges, and concluded: “It would be a misfortune if private
endowments, unless plainly shown to have committed abuses,
should be prohibited” There should be, however, “no alliance
between these private foundations or endowments and the Gov-
ernment. The State or Government should neither subsidize them
nor be subsidized by them, nor cooperate with them. Such co-
operation has often led to public scandal. Instead of calling upon
private foundations for help, the Government should treat them
as competitors. No effort on the part of Government officials to
secure financial assistance from them should be allowed.” *

THE TEXTRON INVESTIGATION AND BUSINESS ABUSES

Congressional investigations have, on occasion, given sharp at-
tention to improper business uses of foundations. In 1948, for ex-
ample, a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Interstate
and Foreign Commerce (80th Congress, 2nd Session) investi-
gated the operations of the Textron Corporation, which had used
several tax-exempt foundations in complex business manipula-
tions. Essentially, the Textron idea was to provide tax-free shelter
for business interests, but in organizations which could remain
under control. The investigation opened the eyes of many to the
extent to which foundations could be and had been used in tax
evasion and tax avoidance.

It disturbed this Congressional Committee that no agency of
government had any information of consequence on the subject,
nor any data regarding the resultant unfair competitive advan-
tages enjoyed by foundations operating in business fields. The
Committee expressed concern over the number of “family” foun-
dations, and quoted Fortune magazine, which had described the
practices of these organizations as “excessively secretive.” These
organizations were apparently considered by the families which
controlled them to be their own private affair. The Committee
castigated this secretiveness as unjustified and indefensible, as
such foundations received their preferred tax treatment from so-

♦ P. 387.

THE TEXTRON INVESTIGATION 15

ciety and hence owed a definite obligation to satisfy their public
sanction.

The Senate Committee endorsed two recommendations which
had been offered by The Russell Sage Foundation: that compulsory
reporting of financial and other operational activities of founda-
tions be required; and that tax exemption be restricted to organi-
zations with an active program of public welfare.

The Textron disclosures, and studies of other abuses of the tax
laws through the use of charitable foundations, led to a strength-
ening of the Internal Revenue Code. It is no longer as easy as it
was to use foundations for business manipulations intended to
evade or avoid the imposition of taxes. It is not the purpose of
this study, however, to discuss the business or tax-avoidance use
of foundations in detail. The Internal Revenue Service seems alert
to the problem involved and is likely to propose successive, cor-
rective legislative measures whenever new business abuses of the
tax-exemption privilege appear. My concern is with the cultural
and intellectual aspects of foundation activity. It is in the field of
ideas that foundations exert the greatest influence on our lives
and on the future of our country.

This is a field in which private inquiry should be encouraged.
Congress is limited in its authority and in its approach. Almost all
foundations are created under state law, and their rights and
privileges are, for the most part, determined by state law. The
leverage of the Congress, in attempting to hold them to proper
activity, rests almost solely in the tax laws. The Federal Govern-
ment has no power to regulate foundations in a direct way. It can
only withhold the privilege of exemption from Federal taxes if
they do not meet certain criteria of conduct delineated by the tax
statutes.

Under these and associated handicaps, a Congressional inquiry
cannot hope to do the thorough study which the subject requires.
The Cox and Reece Committees did touch on some of the major
cultural and intellectual aspects of foundation operation, but in
this area private inquiry could promise wider and even more
penetrating study.

16 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

Congressional investigation of foundation activity should con-
tinue; the subject is too grave to suffer Congressional neglect. On
the other hand, the searching minds of students who are uncon-
cerned with political consequences could contribute much to an
understanding of the impact of foundations on public affairs and
the consequent hazards.

THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TAX-EXEMPT INSTITUTIONS

Many authors have found a challenging object of study in the so-
cial implications of charitable activity by juridical persons. Char-
ity is a virtue attributed to physical persons. The great religions
since time immemorial have identified it with personal salvation.
As a concern of lay institutions organized to dispense benefaction
to the poor and deserving, it is of a more recent nature. Origi-
nating with religious bodies, organized charity has been used as
an instrument of power from time to time over the centuries by
its administrators. Is the potential of power of a great and wealthy
charitable organization any the less a danger because it has no
religious affiliation? Humanity has found that even a religious
identity has not always kept powerful charitable organizations
from conflicting with the public interest.

This conflict frequently required action by the sovereign against
a power position established under the guise of religious charity.
Usually, the curbing of privileged and tax-exempt charitable or-
ganizations took place because of their economic power. But there
are also instances of intercession by the government for the de-
clared reason that such bodies, established for charity, frequently
exercised thought control. Indeed, there have been few instances
in which both these motives have not been present simultaneously
in varying proportions.

In 767, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Kopronymos, after
first attempting to tax the holdings of the numerous monasteries
which had become too powerful, confiscated their properties,
which had been donated by generations of Christians for chari-
table purposes and pious causes. He started a pattern of secular-

SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TAX-EXEMPTION 17

ization which was often repeated by popes, kings, and revolution-
ary governments.

On May 6, 131 2, Pope Clement V dissolved the very powerful
order of the Knights Templar. The Templars had become a sym-
bol of charity and culture; they had also grown enormously
wealthy and had become a very strong influence in the western
world. By the 12th century they had come to own 9,000 manors
and had become rich to obvious excess. Their contributions to
the security and civilization of Europe, their performance during
the Crusades were soon forgotten. Acting in concert with the
princes, the Pope suppressed the order; it had antagonized the
secular states by its enormous aggregation of tax-exempt wealth,
and the Church by some of its heretical beliefs and practices.
Like some of our modern foundations, it had gone into politics.
A later Pope, referring to this precedent in dissolving the Jesuit
order, described the consequences of excessive wealth and in-
fluence as general disrepute (ob universalem diffamationem sup •
pressit et totaliter exiinxit).

The Roots of the Reformation were not in dogma alone. It gave
the princes an opportunity to secularize the property of the
Church. At the time of the reign of Henry VIII in England, the
Church held two thirds of the votes in the House of Lords;
owned one third of the land, and the best of it; and possessed an
income two and one half times that of the Crown. The Spanish
Crown, facing an increasing shrinkage of taxable land in the
American colonies, forbade transfers of real property to religious
institutions. Such institutions already owned about half the real
estate in Mexico. Several Catholic powers, sometimes with the
very approval of the Church, confiscated property accumulated
from charitable donations and legacies in the hands of religious
orders and societies.

It was in 1773 that Pope Clement XIV dissolved the Jesuit or-
der, which had already been expelled from Spain (in 1767),
France (1764), and Portugal (1759). This order had contributed
very substantially to the preservation of the Roman Catholic

18 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

Church during the Reformation. Its charitable activities were im-
measurable. In education, it had created methods of teaching and
institutions of learning unexcelled at the time and exemplary even
today. But its wealth and influence had aroused bitter and power-
ful resentment. This resentment lay partly in the political activity
of some of the guiding managers of the Order. As a friendly his-
torian put it: “Their disobedience to the rule — to abstain from
politics — besmirched the name of the society and destroyed the
good work of the other Jesuits, who were faithfully carrying out
their own proper duties.’* A less friendly historian commented:
“Their perpetual meddling in politics and even in speculation and
finance, stank in the nostrils of every government in Europe;
while their high-handedness and corrupt greed in the matters of
ecclesiastical privileges and patronage alienated the clergy.”

Islamic nations had their share of the problem of vast accumu-
lations of wealth in religious organizations. Such accumulations,
against a background of increasing population and decreasing
free arable lands, made eventual confiscation inevitable; the in-
creasing loss of revenue through the growth of the tax-exempt
rolls made the problem more acute. The pious sultans of the Ot-
toman Empire contributed to the problem by donating land con-
sistently to religious foundations. Upon each conquest, they reg-
ularly separated one fifth of their new territories for the use of
charitable foundations ( vakuf ). When the Ottoman Empire fell,
two thirds of all real property in its domains was owned by re-
ligious foundations. The withdrawal of such property from circu-
lation and from taxation was one of the causes of the Empire’s
downfall.

Critical students of foundations have always been concerned
with their potential of power. In modern times, however, changing
political concepts have sometimes produced special criticism re-
lated to the trends of the moment. In 1950 Prime Minister Attlee
of England appointed a committee to investigate charitable trusts.
It questioned the merits and the place of voluntary charitable en-
dowments in a welfare state. It concluded, however, that they
must be given room and opportunity to contribute to the search

SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TAX-EXEMPTION 19

for social advances. At the time, there were some no,ooo chari-
table trusts in England, 30,000 of them in the field of education.

In 1930 appeared a book written by Frederick P. Keppel, The
Foundation, Its Place in American Life.* Dr. Keppel, a former
Dean of Columbia College and a leading exponent and manager
of foundations, reviewed the relative responsibilities of private
endowments and government. He conceived of foundations as
clearing houses for ideas (p. 98), holding that they must be will-
ing to take the initiative and must show courage as well as pru-
dence (p. 94). They must, he said, be ever on guard against in-
dulging in propaganda, even virtuous propaganda; he obviously
saw the danger of political identification in charitable work, mind-
ful of the suspicions disclosed by the Walsh Commission's hear-
ings on Industrial Relations, There may have been some incon-
sistency in that he implored foundations not to wait for
applications but to initiate their own programs, while at the same
time he cautioned them against propaganda.

Dr. Keppel agreed with Beardsley Ruml, another eminent foun-
dation manager: “In general, private funds are most appropri-
ately used for work of a more experimental character, or for
activities *** not a public responsibility." (P. 43.) He supported
the proposition that foundation money should be used as “venture
capital” in matters concerning welfare and culture. He advocated
reliance on expert advisory boards, acting as intermediaries for
foundations, presumably competent to counsel on the relative
merits of applications and the proper priority of causes. In taking
this position, Dr. Keppel may have been partly responsible for
many of the foundation practices relating to patronage and the
selection of projects which have come under recent severe crit-
icism. Yet he , himself, said, “The administrative camel has
crowded the intellectual pilgrim out of his tent” at the same time
that he referred to criticism of bureaucratic practices as “often
unreasonable criticism.”

Dr. Keppel encouraged a pattern of operation which tends to
make foundations the ultimate guides and judges of merits in the

• Macmillan, 1930.

20 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

intellectual world. He did this by implying that Foundation trus-
tees and managers should and could assume leadership in the
realm of ideas with the help of intermediary expert organizations
supported, in turn, by foundation funds.

Edward C. Lindeman, another leader in the world of tax-
exempt organizations, reviewed foundation significance in his
book Wealth and Culture * Whereas, the repon of the Walsh
Committee had expressed mainly the fear of capitalist political
machinations by the large foundations, Lindeman, then a social-
ist, seems to have believed in and approved of their power to
contribute toward social change. He said:

The New State of the future will need social technicians
who will be asked to engage in cultural planning just as
technological experts and economists will be called upon to
plan for orderly material production and distribution.
Those who have exercised a similar function during the
individualist-competitive phase of modern economy have
been, to a very large extent, associated with foundations and
trusts. Consequently it becomes pertinent to discover how
these culture-determiners have operated in the past.

Lindeman presented the true facts of life in the relation be-
tween foundations and the recipients of support. His observations
are in conflict with the apologetic contentions of those managers
of endowments who testified in later Congressional hearings that
they did not interfere with the intellectual pursuits of grantees.
“Foundations,” he says (p. 19),

do not merely exercise powers over those who accept their
money. Such influence is obvious even when the foundation
making grants insists on the contrary. A more subtle and
much more widespread control comes about by reason of
the multitude of indirect relationships in which foundations
play a part. Those who accept foundation grants often turn

• Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1936.

SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TAX-EXEMPTION 21

out to be radical critics, in private, of the control which
has been exercised over them and their programs. Those
who live in anticipation of receiving foundation grants are
more servile. Another device for projecting foundation con-
trol has become popular in recent years: foundations fre-
quently supply the initial funds for a new project, these
funds to be used for exploratory and conferencing purposes.
In many cases the foundation acts as host for such prepara-
tory groups. By the time the final project is formulated, it
becomes clear that nothing will be proposed or performed
which may be interpreted as a challenge to the orthodox
conception of value which characterizes foundations as a
whole. Very few important cultural projects of any size are
consummated in this country without having experienced
either the direct or indirect impact of foundation philosophy
and influence.

Here we have an expression of concern not any longer with
economic power or political intention to protect capitalism but
generally with the control of thought practiced by the dispensers
of financial support.

JLindeman, too, was suspicious of the secrecy under which so
many endowments operate. He expressed surprise to discover
that those who managed foundations and trusts did not wish to
have these instruments investigated “by his privately conducted
survey.” He felt that as semi-public institutions they owed the
public information about their activities. Looking at them as sym-
bols of surplus wealth, he considered them “a consistently con-
servative element in our civilization.” (P. 12.) Speaking of trus-
tees (p. 59), he condemned the

repugnant arrogance of those who presume to impose cul-
tural norms upon a society on no basis of warrant other
than their pecuniary success under the dispensation of a
competitive economy.**** In a decent society creative per*
sons should not be expected to debase themselves as persons

22 THE STUDY OF. FOUNDATIONS

in order to gain the economic security which permits them
to work. When they do so their true creativeness evaporates
with tragic suddenness.

The change in prevalent fashions of thinking and in the social
climate arising during and after the Depression altered the style
of foundation performance so much that later analysts of their
impact on our culture have more and more expressed their con-
cern at a record of anticonservative performance. A generation
of critics that feared the adverse effect of “capitalistic” bias of
trustees was succeeded by observers who, from their study of the
support of ideas and organizations by tax-exempt foundations,
concluded that foundations had become the breeding ground for
socialist and related political movements and action. This more
recent generation of students, while equally impressed with the
potentials of control of education and of public affairs in general
by self-perpetuating, wealthy organizations beyond public con-
trol, has become concerned over the danger of foundation support
of various undesirable concepts and movements having political
implications. Among these are the ideas of the welfare state; the
principles of economic determinism; excesses in the promotion of
progressive education; the impairment of our national sovereignty;
and even subversion. Hence the support by a majority in Congress
of both the Cox and Reece Committee inquiries.

Frank Hughes, in his book Prejudice and the Press * in connec-
tion with an analysis of the Report of the Hutchins-Luce Com-
mission on Freedom of the Press, points to the emergence of pro-
fessional foundation executives as the group actually in control of
the billions of dollars of foundation resources. (P. 292.) He
suggests that the business men holding positions as trustees had
abandoned their responsibility to a professional class of admin-
istrators. As authority for this contention he quotes a book by
Harrison and Andrews, both of The Russell Sage Foundation*}* :
“The primary function of the board of trustees is the broad de-

• Devin-Adair, 1950.

t American Foundations for Social Welfare , 1946, p. 44.

SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TAX-EXEMPTION 23

termination of policies in harmony with the foundation’s charter.
However completely authority has been vested in the board, it
has neither the time nor usually the special knowledge required for
detailed administration of the work of the larger foundations**
Because administrators come from teaching and administrative
jobs in colleges and universities (he says virtually all are educa-
tors or former educators), Hughes argues that they exhibit the
progovernment bias prevalent in university circles. He attrib-
utes this to the "big business” nature of higher learning and its
dependence on government favor and government support.

In the influence of the administrators on the choice of causes
and recipients supported by grants, Hughes sees a real danger
to the Republic. He accuses foundations of commonly practicing
interlocking management together with some of the large uni-
versities (pp. 284-297); of giving money, with exceptions only,
to supervised projects; of acting as, and supporting, propaganda
agencies; of making little money available to foster individual
and independent thought and research. “A more tight and monop-
olistic control of great wealth would be hard to find in any other
segment of American economy.” Their interlocking with the
boards of large universities is documented by numerous names of
multiple trusteeship holders. He points to the invasion of founda-
tion boards of trustees by the trustees of universities, in addition
to the emergence of university teachers as the professional man-
agers of foundations. He quotes a study that found fifty-four trus-
teeships in twenty-nine foundations held by men who were also
trustees of universities.

Frank Hughes fears for the freedoms of America. He is a con-
servative, but his criticism, like that of the generation of Senator
Walsh or Edward C. Lindeman, is essentially based on the ab-
stract fear of bigness and concentration of power as a political
factor. Like earlier students of foundations, he is concerned with
foundation support of selected political ideas and favored institu-
tions. Like his predecessors from the opposing political camp, he
gives insufficient attention to the impact of foundation giving on
cultural patterns and on the motivations for creativity. Whether

24 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

one agrees with the political bias of today's or yesterday's analysts
o£ the impact of tax-exempt organizations on public affairs, the
problem of the relationship between money and creative genius
demands major examination.

Such examination has been undertaken recently, among others,
by William H. Whyte, Jr., an editor of Fortune magazine, in his
book The Organization Man.* Whyte, who had previously cov-
ered the story of The Ford Foundation in magazine articles, is
well informed about current foundation practices. In his book he
deals with the disastrous impact of organization techniques on
the life of America. He attributes to them a growing force for con-
formism, threatening in the end to destroy all vestiges of genius,
individual responsibility and initiative, and with them the con-
cepts of individual independence and liberty so dear to earlier
generations. In the corporate mechanics of the foundations he
sees one of the most menacing trends resulting from the social
patterns of an age controlled by organization bureaucrats. He
contends that the flow of really good ideas and scientific achieve-
ment is hindered rather than advanced by the habitual bigness of
corporation- or foundation-supported research projects.

America, he says, has been borrowing ideas from Europe, es-
pecially in basic research, from nations favored neither by large
industrial-research operations nor by the bounty of giant tax-
exempt foundations. Organization support favors team research.
Our learned journals are increasingly publishing papers by two or
more authors, indicating a preference for group performance over
individual problem study. Planning of scientific work by com-
mittee has become the accepted pattern. Consequently scientists
do not merely submit their findings to the judgment of others — as
has been the case through the ages of learned discourse. They
now depend on others also in the early stage, when they decide
what specific problems to investigate. Even if committees of or-
ganization functionaries do not form an interlocking directorate,
according to Whyte, they are “a reflection of the concentrations of
influences normal in the academic world. But for that very reason,

# Simon & Schuster, 1956.

SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TAX-EXEMPTION 25

the ambitious younger man — and scientists are just as ambitious as
anybody else — takes his cues from these guides, and those who
prefer to look into questions unasked by others need a good bit of
intellectual fortitude to do so.” (P. 222.)

Whyte believes that the distraction offered by the lure of funds
for organization-favored projects seriously impairs the creative
potential of our scientists. He quotes an example of a meeting of
twenty top scientists in a particular field for the purpose of listen-
ing to the plans of a chairman of a great foundation. About eight
of these men were on the verge of some really important work, he
reports. But as no indication of interest in the preferences of the
scientists was given by the foundation chairman, the meeting
dealt only with his plans and projects calling for fresh starts. The
feeling prevailed that the work to be financed by the foundation
would “be in the long run a net subtraction” of the scientific as-
sets previously accumulated by the participating scholars. Whyte
fears the consequences of such usurpation of the basic role of the
scientist by a scientific and fund bureaucracy. “The most fertile
new ideas,” he says, quoting L. L. Whyte, “are those which
transcend established, specialized methods and treat some new
problem as a single task*** cooperative groups, from great indus-
trial concerns to small research teams, inevitably tend to rely on
what is already acceptable as common ground* *

The increasing dependence of research on support by grants
forces scientists into a vicious circle, described by Curt Richter of
Johns Hopkins in the following words quoted from W. H. Whyte,
Jr. (p. 225):

In making application for a grant before World War II, a
few lines or at most a paragraph or two sufficed for the
experimental design; now it may extend over six to eight
single-spaced typewritten pages. And even then committee
members may come back for more details, Under these cir-
cumstances, passing the buck has come to be practiced very
widely. Projects are passed from Committee to Committee
— to my knowledge, in one instance six Committees — largely

26 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

because at no place along the line did any one believe that

he had adequate information to come to a firm decision.

The control imposed on a scientist by the requirement that
his research designs be approved by the members of numerous
giant committees will bring his ideas down to the lowest intel-
lectual common denominator. It will impose on him the most
powerful pressure to conform to a pattern of mediocrity. Whyte
ridicules the argument presented for scientific teamwork: that the
group, even in the realm of thought, is superior to the individual.
The foundations have not responded to the challenge to invigor-
ate individual research. "Instead of countering the bureaucra-
tization of research they are intensifying it.” (P. 230.)

It is no wonder that so many creative individuals have been
conditioned to abandon individual projects. The climate pro-
duced in the world of ideas by the large foundations, upon whose
support so many scholars must rely for research, is not favorable
to individual projects. Such scholars are often seduced into group
research because of the difficulty of getting individual grants and
because of the financial lure of generous foundation subsidy for
large projects. This lure draws many away from potentially crea-
tive work and the pursuit of new discovery, and leads them into
Sterile fields tended by conformists. Whyte states that, with few
exceptions (the Guggenheim foundations being an outstanding
one), the great foundations concentrate their giving on institu-
tions and on big team projects. Where individual grants are
eventually contemplated, these foundations generally rely on
other organizations and institutions to select from among applica-
tions. Whyte gives this shocking example of "projectitis” and the
neglect of the individual researcher. He says that he approached
thirteen top sociologists "not working on currently fashionable
problems but who were thought first rate.” (P. 238.) He found
that seven had applied to one of the big three foundations (Ford,
Rockefeller, and Carnegie) for giants and all but one had been
turned down. He said that, with one exception, they all felt they
would not get sympathetic consideration by these foundations.

SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TAX-EXEMPTION 27

In pointing out their achievements, foundations offer a long list
of contributions made by their grantees in the sciences, and a
shorter list of outstanding foundation-supported accomplishments
in the arts. Yet, again and again, they have been severely crit-
icized for the general sterility of their products and for the tend-
ency to elaborate old ideas instead of venturing into the daring
unorthodoxies.* Whyte points out what has become a bureau-
cratic feature of this big-project process fostered by most of the
large foundations — the tendency toward project self-perpetuation.
He says: “Many a project gets to a point where its main reason
for being is to produce more research to justify a grant for more
research***.” (P. 236.)

He quotes J. A. Gengerelli, head of the Psychology Depart-
ment of the University of California, Los Angeles:

We have a social force that selectively encourages and re-
wards the scientific hack. There is a great hustle and bustle,
a rushing back and forth to scientific conferences, a great
plethora of $50,000 grants for $100 ideas. I am suggesting
that scientific, technical, and financial facilities are such in
this country as to encourage a great number of mediocrities
to go into science, and to seduce even those with creative
talent and imagination to a mistaken view of the nature of
the scientific enterprise, (P. 239.)

The unquestionable merits of a substantial part of what founda-
tions have done and continue to do for the public welfare should
not absolve them from criticism whenever their chosen prefer-
ences, or the unintended by-products of their manner of opera-
tion, develop into dangers to the Republic. Such dangers have
been demonstrated by public investigators and by private ob-
servers in the potential and real influence of foundation power in
the field of politics. To this observation has now been added a
fear of the far-reaching influence of foundation-controlled money

• My use of the term "unorthodoxies” requires explanation. What is orthodox
today may be daring tomorrow; and what was daring twenty or thirty years
ago may be orthodox today. A certain form of "liberalism” is currently ortho-
dox in intellectual circles.

28 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

in the realm of ideas and on patterns of creative behavior of scien-
tists and artists.

Whether foundation managers like to admit their influence or
not, foundation giving most obviously has an enormous impact on
education, on social thinking, and ultimately on political action.
This influence reaches the public through the schools and acad-
demies, through publicity, and through educational and other as-
sociations dedicated to public and international affairs. Founda-
tions per se are neither good nor bad. It is the people who run
them who must account, morally, to the public. It is these man-
agers who are responsible for foundation performance. The laws
under which foundations operate are, to say the least, imperfect,
But a reform of the law can impose only negative checks and bal-
ances on foundation spending and can never convert juridical
persons to a truly creative pattern of action. Short of hampering
foundations to a point of ineffectiveness, all the legislator can do is
to protect the public against certain abuses of power. Only the
trustees and managers of foundations themselves Gin direct the
application of tax-exempt funds more intelligently to the public
welfare.

FOUNDATION RESPONSIBILITY

In his statement to the Reece Committee in 1954, Mr. H. Rowan
Gaither, then President of The Ford Foundation, estimated the
annual contributions to philanthropy in the United States at
$5,600,000,000. Of this sum, he iaid, less than 3 percent came
from foundations. There can be no doubt that foundations repre-
sent, financially, but a small part of the philanthropic world. Ac-
cording to figures published by The American Association of
Fund-Raising Counsel, Inc., annual charitable donations in 1956
had reached the astounding figure of $6,100,000,000. Endow-
ments and properties of privately supported religious, educational,
health, and welfare institutions had increased in 1956 by an esti-
mated $1,400,000,000 and now exceeded $42,000,000,000, Of this
total, religious institutions owned about $12,200,000,000; and
about 53 percent of all donations were for religious purposes.

FOUNDATION RESPONSIBILITY 29

Education consumed g percent of the total; contributions to phil-
anthropic and charitable foundations, something like 3 percent.
The Association of Fund-Raising Counsel, Inc., estimates that, out
of about 40,000 organizations listed by the Internal Revenue
Service as tax exempt, the number of those engaged in giving is
about 6,000. It estimates, further, that such foundations own
assets running between $7,000,000,000 and $9,500,000,000.

Mr, Gaither was on weak ground, however, if he sought to
prove the relative unimportance of foundations through financial
comparison with other philanthropic media. Foundations occupy
a unique place in our society for many reasons, of which two are
peculiarly important for distinguishing them from other philan-
thropic bodies. One is that foundations are not subject to the nor-
mal forms of control by which other institutions are checked, such
as responsibility to a constituency or membership, or to an aca-
demic body. The second is that, under the influence of the “ven-
ture capital” theory, so much foundation money has been chan-
neled in favor of social change.

Only a minority of foundations has fallen victim to the obsession
for social change. But among this minority are to be found some
of the wealthiest and some of the oldest endowments. They have
adopted the concept that foundations should be clearing-houses
for ideas, and they must accept responsibility for the results of
their selected patronage. Such responsibility, as John D. Rocke-
feller, Jr., put it at the hearings of the Walsh Commission, may re-
sult in legislative steps to protect the interests of the public.

Foundations cannot deny their public responsibility. The Rus-
sell Sage Foundation, a leader in the foundation world, specializ-
ing in philanthropic research, has repeatedly insisted upon public
accounting of foundation finances and activities. Mr. Dean Rusk,
President of The Rockefeller Foundation and of the General Edu-
cation Board, said, in his statement to the Reece Committee; “We
are convinced that tax-exempt organizations should make regular
public reports about their funds and activities.” Many, though not
all, of the large foundations have, for years, issued public reports,
thus implicitly recognizing their responsibility to the public.

30 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

Large foundations can do more harm, as well as more good,
than smaller foundations. But even comparatively small founda-
tions can have an impact on society disproportionate to their
monetary size, particularly when promoting a seductive idea
promising better things for society. When they are ready to tamper
with the public welfare by pursuing particular brands of social
philosophy advocated by their managers, the dynamics of their
use can give these smaller foundations an importance far beyond
their arithmetical magnitude.

Mr. F.( Emerson Andrews, in his Philanthropic Foundations,
writing of the venture capital concept, has this to say:

Because of their relative freedom from governmental and
other controls, it has been suggested that foundations may
have a special mandate to enter fields of controversy, where
the explosive nature of the issues would make suspect the
findings of less independent organizations and where the
needed financing from any other source may prove difficult.

(P* *9-)

Following this interpretation of the venturecapital concept, the
work of even comparatively small foundations can obviously have
enormous impact on our society. A few examples will illustrate:

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a substan-
tial foundation, but a dwarf compared with the giants like Ford,
Rockefeller, and the Carnegie Corporation, has achieved stupen-
dous importance and power. By 1953, its net assets, despite heavy
disbursements, had about doubled to $20, 0oo, 000. Spending an-
nually between $500,000 and $600,000, the endowment achieved
a key position in the areas of foreign relations and international or-
ganizations. Its influence, increasing over the past 47 years, has
reached into the Department of State, into the law schools where
international law is taught, into the foreign offices of other nations,
and into the United Nations and its associated organizations.

Through concentrated efforts in publishing, in the organization
and management of conferences, and in cooperation with various

FOUNDATION RESPONSIBILITY 31

other groups, some subsidized, it has reached a position of world-
wide influence. It is no longer a mere clearing-house for ideas; it
has become a proponent of the particular ideas of its trustees, its
staff, and an entourage sympathetic to certain special concepts of
international relations promoted by the foundation itself. The stra-
tegic use of its relatively small funds has resulted in the mobiliza-
tion of additional funds behind causes favored by the endowment,
in the form of matched grants supplied by other foundations
within its sphere of influence. Large funds have also come from
membership contributions to organizations supported by the en-
dowment and, in some instances, created or fathered by it.

Some smaller foundations, like The Hillman Foundation, have
found their influence greatly amplified through the granting of an-
nual awards. Five were recently announced, of $500 each. These
small awards received considerable newspaper publicity. They
were granted, the newspapers reported, “for outstanding work in
journalism, magazines and books in 1956.“ The "outstanding”
works selected, however, were all political. Consistent with the
policy of The Hillman Foundation, they concerned political goals
of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, of which the
late Mr. Hillman, as a tribute to whom the foundation had been
created, had been president. In addition to an award to The
New York Times for its editorial treatment of the Near East crisis
a reporter of the Des Moines Tribune received one for articles on
segregation; an editor of Harper’s, one for an editorial attacking
censorship efforts of private organizations; Robert Penn Warren,
one for an article in Life on segregation; and Professor Walter
Gellhorn of Columbia, one for his book on Individual Freedom
and Government Restraints .

Other foundations have offered public prizes and, in this way,
multiplied their public visibility and increased immeasurably
their opportunities for propaganda. The Nobel prize, as well as
the Stalin prize, illustrate this method of publicity-producing
giving. Though the purpose of the Nobel prize is essentially apolit-
ical, while the Stalin prize (or whatever has taken its place since

32 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

Stalin's loss of standing in Russia) is merely a political propaganda
gesture, both evidence the publicity impact which a relatively
small amount of money can have if used strategically.

An example of the sometimes explosive nature of foundation
giving is the support by foundations of the late Dr. Kinsey in what
he called sex research.* The Rockefeller Foundation supported
the National Research Council’s Committee for research in prob-
lems of sex, with a total of $1,755,000 from 1931 to 1954. Of this
sum, the activities conducted by Dr. Kinsey received some
$414,000 from 1941 to 1949, as reported by The Rockefeller
Foundation to the Reece Committee. This amount is microscopic
compared with the total of $6,000,000,000 annually spent on phi-
lanthropy in the United States. But the impact of this compara-
tively small sum on one subject was quite out of proportion to the
relative size of the two figures. One may approve or disapprove of
Dr. Kinsey's efforts, and judge variously their impact upon our sex
mores. But the Kinsey incident does show that comparatively
small donations may have big repercussions in the realm of ideas.

WHAT IS "PROPAGAN DA" AND WHAT IS "EDUCATION"?

What control the Federal Government may exercise over founda-
tions is based almost entirely on the tax law. The State under
whose laws a foundation is organized might penalize it in various
ways or even dissolve it for misconduct. All that the Federal Gov-
ernment can do, however, is to withdraw its tax exemption and
the corresponding tax benefits to donors. What, then, are the bases
for such punishment?

The tax law is woefully weak. The controlling statute is worded
quite generally and loosely; the courts have been inclined to in-
terpret these loose provisions in favor of the foundations; and,
in any event, the Internal Revenue Service is not equipped or
manned to do the "policing” necessary to determine when the law
has been violated.

• The substance of his activity will be discussed in chapter 4 as an important
case illustrating the attempt by foundations to evade responsibility for the
results of their grants.

''PROPAGANDA" AND "EDUCATION" 33

The most important limitation in the law is the one which pro*
liibits political activity. This prohibition is now covered princi-
pally by Section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code of
1954 (formerly paragraph [6] of Section 101) in this way: a
foundation may qualify for tax exemption,

no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on
propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legisla-
tion, and which does not participate in, or intervene in
(including the publishing or distribution of statements),
any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public
office.

This test, quantitatively, is weak. What is a “substantial” part of
its activities? Dollars? Numbers of grants? Impact? It is also weak
qualitatively. Is legislation “influenced” only if a foundation di-
rectly supports the passage or the defeat of a particular piece of
legislation — or does a foundation also "influence” legislation by
promoting a political theory which indirectly results in a change
of law or is intended to?

The term “propaganda” is not defined in the statute. Certainly
there could have been no intention to prohibit all propaganda, as
that would have constituted an attack on the churches, which are
entitled to engage in religious propaganda. “Political” propa-
ganda was intended, certainly, but the phrase “to influence legis-
lation” can be interpreted to be attributive to “propaganda” and
thus to limit it.

The wording of the statute created many ambiguities. It is some-
times extremely difficult to draw the line, for example, between
those forms of education which are essential or desirable in our
democratic society and those which have as their ends the promo-
tion of political value-concepts in the realm of ideas. Numerous
foundations pursue their political ways free of interference by the
Internal Revenue Service because of the ambiguity and weakness
of the statute referred to.

For example, The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation of New
York, a small foundation with an intensive publishing and training

34 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

program, is dedicated to the promotion of Henry George’s single
tax idea. This endowment spends its money to persuade the pub-
lic that real estate taxes can and should replace all other forms of
taxation. It probably abstains from lobbying and from any direct
interference with the legislative process. But it has probably in-
doctrinated thousands of more or less intelligent citizens. What
it does, must, in the end, amount to propaganda to influence legis-
lation. Yet the foundation would undoubtedly claim its efforts
to be “educational.”

A foundation has, for years, supported the World Calendar As-
sociation and the efforts of Miss Elizabeth Achelis to introduce,
world-wide, a new method of computing the calendar year. Her
efforts may be meritorious, but this seemingly apolitical activity
does have legislative aspects. How can a new calendar be
adopted without legislative action?

Supported by a foundation for world government endowed
with 31,000,000 by Mrs. Anita McCormick Blaine, a tax-exempt
Committee to Frame a World Constitution, under Chancellor
Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago, wrote a program
for a World Republic in 1948. The foundation was to finance “a
public educational campaign in the principles of world govern-
ment.” The proposed constitution advocated, among other things,
a national surrender to a World Government of expropriation
rights; control of plans for the improvement of the world’s physi-
cal facilities; the power of taxation, regulation of transportation,
and similar prerogatives of national governments. Dr. Hutchins,
now President of The Ford Foundation’s off-shoot, The Fund for
the Republic, stated in 1948, and may well have believed, that
“world government is necessary, therefore it is — or must be made
— possible.” But the expression of such a belief was hardly apoliti-
cal, and the support by a tax-exempt foundation of the program
which Dr. Hutchins supported was hardly the support of “educa-
tion,”

The American Labor Education Service, Inc., is a tax-exempt or-
ganization. Among its purposes, it lists: “to cooperate with the
labor movement in intensifying education in the field of interna-

"PROPAGANDA" AND "EDUCATION" 35

tional affairs; and to encourage the study of such issues within the
groups and unions/’ It becomes apparent, however, from an ex-
amination of this organization's literature, that the “education”
referred to is essentially propaganda for the political labor move-
ment. In announcements of ALES activities are to be found these
"educational” topics: "How Can Workers* Education Advance
Labor’s Economic and Political Objectives”; "Political Action for
Labor”; and "Political Action Techniques.” In a news letter dis-
cussing the Taft-Hartley Bill, the ALES said: "The passage of the
Taft-Hartley Bill indicates among other things the need for an in-
tensive ‘push* in labor education. The American Labor Education
Service is equipped to furnish this ‘push’***.”

Other examples of the political nature of this foundation’s work
will be found in Chapter 6 and in the staff report on the ALES
to the Reece Committee,* This foundation received financial sup-
port from The Rockefeller Foundation. Perhaps the presence of
the word "Education” in the name of the American Labor Educa-
tion Service was sufficient to prove that its work was purely "edu-
cational.”

Another strange "educational” tax-exempt organization is The
League for Industrial Democracy, formerly The Intercollegiate
Socialist Society. In a booklet entitled, significantly, "Revolt,” it
described its work as follows:

. i

The League for Industrial Democracy is a militant educa-
tional movement which challenges those who would think
and act for a "new social order based on production for use
not for profit.” That is a revolutionary slogan. It means that
members of the LID think and work for the elimination of
capitalism, and the substitution for it of a new order, in
whose building the purposeful and passionate thinking of
the student and worker today will play an important part.

The LID has only a modest budget of $50,000 a year, some of
it supplied by foundations, but its influence has been wide and
deep.

• Reece Committee Hearings, Part II, p. 1158 el seq.

36 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

It is understandable that the Bureau of Internal Revenue con-
tested the tax-exempt status of the LID. However, the U. S. Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals, in 1931,* upheld its tax exemption by ap-
plying the broadest possible interpretation of the term “educa-
tion/* against the contention of die Collector of Internal Revenue
that the organization was political. It has enjoyed tax exemption
ever since; it goes about its business of promoting socialism, with*
out harassment by the Internal Revenue Service.

In a lengthy letter submitted to the Reece Committee, Dr.
Laidler of the LID insisted upon a similarity between the work of
the LID and some college courses in the social sciences. He said
that books and pamphlets published by the LID were, in fact,
used in some college courses. Using this as a major premise, and
the fact that colleges are educational as a minor premise, he pro-
duces a syllogism with the conclusion that the work of the LID is
also educational.

Semantic difficulties in interpreting statutes are not unusual in
our system of law, or in any other. Admittedly our courts have a
problem in trying to draw the line between education in its ac-
ceptable sense and “education” which is political propaganda
intended to influence legislation. They are inclined to interpret
punitive statutes liberally in favor of the litigant, strictly against
the government. This should probably be so. But decisions such
as that in the LID case exhibit a generosity of interpretation so
extreme as to make the punitive statute virtually worthless in so
far as it proscribes propaganda activities by foundations directed
toward influencing legislation. If tax exemption is available to the
LID, which “educates” to socialist ends, there is no reason why it
should not be available to organizations which educate to other
partisan and political ends such as segregation, other forms of
racial and religious discrimination, polygamy, nudism, and fas-
cism.

If the law is sufficiently ambiguous to permit political propa-
ganda under the guise of education, this ambiguity does not, how-
ever, justify foundation managers in supporting such activities,

• Wcyl v* Commissioner, 48 F. (sd) 8w.

WHAT IS "RELIGIOUS"? 37

An interpretation of the venture capital theory permitting the use
of tax-exempt funds for partisan purposes would be a palpable
absurdity. It is a different matter with organizations created to
pursue partisan ends and using the dues of members for this pur-
pose. The managers of tax-exempt endowments act as trustees not
only for the donors to such foundations but also for the public.
They have as little right to use their trust funds for partisan ends
as they have to put them into their own pockets.

Not all tax-exempt foundations have received as generous treat-
ment from the courts as did the League for Industrial Democracy,
The Twentieth Century Fund lost its tax exemption for the
years 1935 to 1939 because of its advocacy of enabling laws on
credit-union extension. In 1925 the World Peace Foundation lost
its tax-exempt status because it acted as a distributor of League
of Nations literature, then considered partisan propaganda* It re-
gained its exemption in 1928 because, by that time, its activities
were no longer deemed an attempt to influence legislation. Re-
cently the exemption of The Institute of Pacific Relations was re-
voked for reasons which shall be discussed later. There have been
other cases of exemption denial. Looking at them together, one is
impressed with their lack of consistency, and this is no wonder.
Each case depends upon the semantic interpretation of the con-
trolling statute which appeals to the court before which it is
heard.*

WHAT IS "RELIGIOUS"?

The courts are faced with another semantic difficulty when
obliged to determine which organizations arc entitled to tax ex-
emption because their activities are truly within the scope of the
term "religious,” and which ones cross the line and serve political
ends. In the course of their legitimate religious activities, churches
and religious bodies often develop ancillary programs which are
not religious in the strict sense of the word. In our complex so-

• In hi9 testimony before the Reece Committee, Assistant Commissioner o£

Internal Revenue Norman Sugarman offered a most interesting discussion of

the cases and of the principles applied by the courts and the Revenue Service.

See Hearings, p, 429 et seq.

38 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

ciety, religious groups frequently become involved in legislative
problems. They fight for school buses for religious schools, for
public support of such schools, for temperance, for Sunday ob-
servance. They participate actively in public discussions regard-
ing the divorce laws, birth control, religious instruction in the pub-
lic schools, etc.

There are in existence many para-religious organizations whose
only relationship to religion is that their membership comes from
only one confession. Such organizations claim tax exemption,
though principally devoted to the advancement of political group
interests in legislation. Some of them maintain registered lobbyists
in Washington. They are dedicated to such diverse causes as the
political and financial support of the State of Israel; the fight
against segregation; the liberalization of the immigration laws for
the benefit of their co-religionists; and opposition to the political
aims of certain other religious groups.

There can be little doubt that some of these militant organiza-
tions, spending their tax-exempt funds openly to influence legisla-
tion, should be deprived of their tax advantage. But there is little
promise of this happening. Both the legislature and the courts are
understandably reluctant to take any steps which, rightly or
wrongly, might be called an interference with the freedom of re-
ligion. In addition, as far as the courts are concerned, the law is
regrettably ambiguous as it stands.

FOUNDATION RESPONSIBILITY IN SUPPORTING SOCIAL CHANGE

In statements filed with the Reece Committee, some foundation
managers maintained that they were not responsible for the fre-
quency with which grants have been applied to the advancement
of social change toward anticapitalism. They attributed the preva-
lence of New Deal sentiment, in the literature and programs
which they have supported, to the political and intellectual cli-
mate of the times. If foundations have favored quasi-socialisl “lib-
eral” causes and discriminated against ‘‘conservative” programs,
it may well be due to some extent, to the fact that the preference

FOUNDATION SUPPORT OF SOCIAL CHANGE 39

had already existed in the academic world. Also, there may have
been a penetration of foundation boards and administrative ranks
by anticonservative professionals (academicians, scholars, and ad-
ministrators), with a resulting adoption of their current idiosyncra-
sies by the endowments.

This tendency was accelerated by the use of intermediary agen-
cies and individual "expert'* consultants. The judging of the mer-
its of grant proposals was delegated to these agencies and con-
sultants. Such delegation cannot, however, shift responsibility
away from the foundation managers. Advisory experts were
chosen for their standing in the academic world. But the structure
of academic life does not differ from other structures in this sense
— it encompasses a web of political forces. The politically minded
manipulator often is rewarded with eminent status, whether he is
a true scholar or not. The symbol of academic prestige is not
necessarily an evidence of learning or of sound social judgment.
Once an academician is selected to act as an "expert, ** he be-
comes one in the public eye because he has been so chosen. He
may have succeeded in coming into office chiefly because he had
developed good "public relations.’* If that was the case, he is
likely to support whatever fads and foibles enabled him to suc-
ceed, rather than the thought of truly creative minds.

These "experts" have almost invariably followed the current
fashion which grew up among teachers and political scientists un-
der a barrage of communist and socialist propaganda and under
the impact made by the depression of 1930. This fashion is one of
confidence in the power of man to create heaven on earth by
manipulating the structure of government. The belief in radical
change is manifested by the statement of William C. Carr, Execu-
tive Secretary of the National Education Association of the United
States, to the Reece Committee. According to the NEA, it is not
the American ideal to be hostile to change. It attributes the great-
ness of America to the freedom of its citizens "to propose and
adopt modifications in the structure of the Government, and of
their other institutions,** The NEA believes it is the right and duty

40 THE STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS

of good citizens to adapt their political and social institutions,
within the broad circumstances of our constitutional freedoms, to
meet new circumstances and conditions*

Mr. Carr is quoted not to contest his point but to bring out that
the change which he supports is clearly political. It would seem
apparent, therefore, that the advocacy of such change, having es-
sential political implications, is not a proper field for a foundation
whose tax exemption is granted by the grace of the entire public.
Yet some of the large foundations seem to have adopted an almost
religious belief in change for change’s sake. Even in the absence
of a conspiracy among foundations to promote change, the cumu-
lative effect of this almost unison approach, and the absence of
any substantial support for contrary movements looking toward
social stability, seems to warrant questioning whether these
foundations are truly performing their trust duty to the public.

Trends come into being, from time to time, and may persist
whether foundation-supported or not. The real responsibility of
foundations rests in their ability to provide war chests in the bat-
tle of ideas. However much foundation managers may talk about
their right and duty to use their trust funds as venture capital,
there can be little doubt that in their “ventures” they have given
preference to the political ideas held T>y cliques of academicians
and to the proponents of the ideas who are generally identifiable
as leftist.

Foundations should be responsible for a balanced application
of their support. The normal checks and balances in our public
life can be annihilated through one-sided foundation support of
the forces calling for change. Obviously, change is often desirable
and even necessary, but not per se . The uncritical support by
foundations of the idea that we must have change for change’s
sake justified two recent Congresses in suspecting foundations of
being agencies frequently favoring undesirable and destructive
goals.

2

THE POWER OF THE
INDIVIDUAL FOUNDATION

RAMIFICATIONS OF THE POWER

The giant foundation can exercise enormous power through the
direct use of its funds. Moreover, it materially increases this power
and its influence by building collateral alliances which serve
greatly to insulate it against criticism. It is likely to find friends
among the banks which hold its great deposits; the investment
and brokerage houses which serve its investment problem; the ma-
jor law firms which act as its counsel; and the many firms, institu-
tions, and individuals with which it deals and which it benefits.
By careful selection of a trustee, here and there, from among
proprietors and executives of newspapers, periodicals, and other
media of communication, it can assure itself of adulation and sup-
port. By engaging “public relations counselors” (ethically, and
even legally, a questionable practice), it can further create for it-
self a favorable press and enthusiastic publicity.

All its connections and associations, plus the often sycophantic
adulation of the many institutions and individuals who had re*
ceived largess from the foundation, give it an enormous aggregate
of power and influence. This power extends beyond its immediate
circle of associations, to those who hope to benefit from its bounty.
Institutions and individuals are powerfully attracted to the poli-
cies of the foundation within their circles of interest and, as long
as the magnetic force in the form of funds persists, are unlikely
to change their orientation.

41

42 POWER OF THE FOUNDATION

The foundation's direct power is the power of money. Privately
financed educational institutions have had a bad time during the
period of rapidly increasing costs. Foundation grants have be-
come so important a source of support that college and university
presidents cannot often afford to ignore the opinions and wishes of
the executives who distribute foundation largess. Such administra-
tors will freely admit that they do not like to receive restricted or
earmarked grants and would far prefer to be unfettered in their
disposition of money given to their institutions. But they will also
admit that they usually dare not turn down a grant, however in-
consistent with their policy, priority of goals, or urgent needs it
may be, for fear they might earn the displeasure of the granting
foundation.

The situation permits large foundations to exercise a profound
influence upon public opinion and upon the course of public af-
fairs. For academic opinion today, as the Reece Committee report
put it, “is the opinion of the intellectuals of tomorrow and will
very likely be reflected into legislation and in public affairs there-
after***.” .

Nor is the control exercisable by a great foundation limited to
its direct relations with the executives and trustees of educational
institutions. Pressure starts at the very bottom of the academic
ladder. A foundation grant may enable a beginner to attain the
precious doctorate which is the first rung. To secure such assist-
ance, is it not likely that he will conform to what he may believe
would please those who give him their financial grace? Then he
becomes a teacher, at a salary sometimes below that of an ordi-
nary laborer. Without supplemental help through a foundation
grant, he can support his family only in poverty; he cannot set
aside the time or the money necessary to enable him to do such
study, research, and writing as may advance him in his career. Is
he, then, likely to run counter to what may be wanted by a foun-
dation considering him for a grant? This teacher finds, as he pro-
gresses in his career, that he has few sources from which to
increase his income other than the foundations; without such ac-
cessory income, he cannot achieve those extracurricular but aca-

HOW THE POWER IS ADMINISTERED 43

demic distinctions which give him prestige and advance him in
the education hierarchy. These distinctions come often from re-
search and writing. Great, dispensing intermediary organizations
control learned journals and university presses; they hold the key
to academic publications and form an effective instrument of
patronage.

Foundations rarely impose conformity in any direct manner.
But they often do so through the selection of grantees and the re-
jection or approval of suggested subjects and methods of re-
search. An academician who is “in” with a great foundation can
hope for advancement to the top. One who is not can still get
there, but it is infinitely more difficult. And, as the Recce Com-
mittee said:

Just as the president of the institution, whose main job
today may well be fund raising, cannot afford to ignore the
bureaucrats' wishes, so the academician cannot. Scholars and
fund raisers both soon learn to study the predilections,
preferences and aversions of foundations’ executives, and
benefit from such knowledge by presenting projects likely
to please them.*

Foundation power poses a problem quite aside from the mo-
mentary preferences of the managers of these funds. These man-
agers may be no less conscientious than public servants. But,
through the fact that they are free from the checks and controls by
which public servants are restrained, there is less probability that
their errors will ever be discovered; and, if they are discovered,
that they will be reversed.

HOW THE POWER IS ADMINISTERED

In small foundations the trustees usually assume the actual work
and responsibility for the examination of applications and the dis-
pensing of grants. In the great ones it is almost standard practice
for the trustees to act largely as window dressing. They may exer-
cise the full power of management and direction if they wish, but

• Report, p. 36.

44 POWER OF THE FOUNDATION

they do not do so. They go through the motions of control. They
often debate issues; they frequently pass on and determine prin-
ciples of operation; they consider and take action on many specific
grants. But the limited time they devote to such work is not
enough to enable them to exercise the degree of control and re-
sponsibility which their duty requires.

It is not inattention, it is not an unwillingness on the part of the
trustees to accept responsibility, which creates this situation. It ii
the fact that most of the great foundations have chosen to operate
in such complex fashion that it is impossible for otherwise busy
trustees, working for the foundation only part time, to perform
adequately. Innumerable errors of a serious nature have been ac-
quiesced in by eminent and intelligent trustees merely because
they have not had the time to study, check, and follow the de-
tailed operation of the foundation sufficiently — nor have they been
able to discover and weigh factors of importance which came to
the attention only of the foundation's executive employees.

The unmanageable volume of business which confronts the
trustees of a great foundation does not, however, excuse that dele-
gation of power so often practiced. Such a delegation may be in
order in a business enterprise, where the failure of its directors
adequately to shoulder responsibility results merely in an un-
happy profit-and-loss statement; all that can be lost is money.
Foundation responsibility is not mere financial responsibility but,
far more importantly, social responsibility. The power to venture
into the realm of thought, to support and promote ideas, should
not be delegated except in a minor, administrative sense. If the
volume of work becomes excessive, it might be necessary to in-
crease the number of trustees and to expect of them full-time at-
tention to their duties. An alternative would be to let unquestion-
ably responsible institutions, such as universities, take over the
function which otherwise would be delegated to foundation em-
ployees or subsidized intermediary organizations.

In many cases, as Dr. Charles W. Briggs, Professor Emeritus of
Columbia University, testified before the Reece Committee, the
true operating heads of these foundations present a program to

HOW THE POWER IS ADMINISTERED 45

(he trustees which is "so general as to get approval and yet so in-
definite as to permit activities which in the judgment of most com-
petent critics are either wasteful or harmful * * *.*'* Even the
formulation of glittering generalities is usually left to administra-
tive officers; the selection and proposal of individual grants and
grantees, almost always* Where express approval by the trustees
is required, they are, all too often, insufficiently informed — indeed,
so often, rubber stamps* Such abandonment of trustee duties has
led to the indefensible practice of leaving the selection of grantees
to the professional managers of organizations created for the pur-
pose of retailing the distribution of wholesale grants.

An extreme instance of this is The Institute of Pacific Relations,
itself a foundation and one of the retailers used by other founda-
tions. To it, The Carnegie Corporation, The Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, and The Rockefeller Foundation con-
tributed millions of dollars. Its record is now well known. The In-
ternal Revenue Service disclosed in 1955 that it had revoked its
tax exemption. Some years ago, after a detailed investigation of
this foundation, the McCarran Committee came to the conclusion
that The Institute of Pacific Relations had been virtually an organ
of the Communist Party of the United States, It held that "at least
since the mid-iggoV*

the net effect of IPR activities on United States public opin-
ion has been pro-Communist and pro-Soviet, and has fre-
quently and repeatedly been such as to serve international
Communist and Soviet interests, and to subvert the interests
of the United States.f

On the board of directors (trustees) of The Institute of Pacific
Relations were men of high caliber and excellent reputation. How,
then, were officers of the Institute able to turn its activities to pro-
Soviet objectives? Professor David N, Rowe explained this to the
Reece Committee. Professor Rowe is an academician of the high-
est standing. Recently on special assignment in Formosa, he had

* Ibid., p. 23.

f McCarran Committee Report , p. 84,

46 POWER OF THE FOUNDATION

been a member of the Yale Executive Committee on International
Relations since 1950 and was Director of Studies from 1951 to
1953. He is one of our foremost authorities on the Far East.

Professor Rowe had himself been a director of The Institute of
Pacific Relations for several years, resigning when he discovered
some of its derelictions and found that he had no power as a direc-
tor. The directors were dummies. The organization was run by
an inner group of its executives. This controlling inner group man-
aged to assemble directors who would either do their will or be
too lax in diligence to discover the true nature of that to which
they gave their assent.

Professor Rowe testified that the executives, on one occasion,
had refused to disclose to the board the names of those whom they
were considering for the position of executive secretary. Asked
what he did about it, Professor Rowe replied:

What could I do? I was practically a minority of one. The
board upheld their decision not to do this. It was not long
after that, as I remember it, that I resigned from the
board. They had a monopoly and they were bringing people
like me in for the purposes of setting up a front and . . .
giving a different kind of coloring to the membership of the
board.*

Now let us look at the other side of this picture. Why did the
trustees of The Rockefeller Foundation, for example, continue to
make substantial donations to The Institute of Pacific Relations
long after the time when, as the McCarran Committee indicated,
there was evidence that the Institute had become an agent of com-
munism?

It is a harrowing story. In 1944, Alfred Kohlberg, a director of
the Institute who had become suspicious of its activities, brought
facts to the attention of The Rockefeller Foundation that showed
beyond any reasonable doubt the real character of the Institute.
Even after discussion of the criticized conditions. The Rockefeller

* Reece Committee Report, p. 39.

HOW THE POWER IS ADMINISTERED 47

Foundation continued to make substantial donations to it.* Its ex-
cuse, that it wanted to help “reform” The Institute of Pacific Rela-
tions, is not tenable. One does not go on making contributions to
a pro-Communist organization in the hope of converting it away
from communism. One cuts off its support.

The answer, in the case of The Rockefeller Foundation, must be
that its trustees were not fully aware of what was happening. Like
the trustees of so many large foundations, they left most decisions
to their employees, the officers of the foundation. The results were
disastrous for our country. The IPR probably had more to do than
any other single factor with conditioning our people to abandon
the mainland of China to the Communists. Its influence even
penetrated the State Department. And its support came chiefly
from large tax-exempt American foundations.

Kenneth Colegrove, Professor Emeritus of Politics at Northwest-
ern University (at the time of his testimony he was on a temporary
teaching assignment at Queens College), had this to say before
the Reece Committee about foundation trustees:

The large number of famous names on the list of trustees
is due to an old superstition that our institutions must be
headed by a famous group of men. And I will say frankly it
is to impress Congress as well as the American people; to im-
press public opinion as much as possible. It is an old super-
stition. It is not necessary at all.f

Professor Colegrove, an authority of the first rank, who had for
eleven years been secretary-treasurer of The American Political
Science Association, elaborated:

Yes; undoubtedly many of the trustees would not serve if
they felt that they would be called upon to do much more
than go to the meetings, hear the reports and sometimes say

• Mr. Joseph Willits was head of the Social Sciences Division of The Rocke-
feller Foundation during the period in question. He was recently in charge of
a Ford Foundation survey of the University of Pennsylvania. One wonders
whether this survey will be as penetrating as the Rockefeller study of The
Institute of Pacific Relations.

■\lbid.j p. $8.

48 POWER OF THE FOUNDATION

not a single word. You would not have as brilliant, as lofty,
as remarkable, a collection of men as trustees if you required
a little more responsibility on their part.*

THE FOUNDATION BUREAUCRATS

In effect, then, most of the very large foundations are operated
by professional employees who assume the functions of designing
programs and determining and selecting grants and grantees.
These functions are the essence of the fiduciary duty of the trus-
tees. It was most distressing to the Reece Committee to find that
such professionals, without themselves having fiduciary responsi-
bility, exercise such vast power. As Professor Colegrove testified:

In the aggregate, the officers of these foundations wield a
staggering sum of influence and direction upon research,
education and propaganda in the United States and even in
foreign countries.

The Committee had before it a mass of evidence of this bu-
reaucratic power. Even its predecessor, the Cox Committee, had
such evidence. It had, for example, received a letter from Dr.
J. Fred Rippey, Professor of American History at Chicago, to which
it apparently had paid little attention. Professor Rippey was in-
censed at the extent to which decisions of vital importance were
left to foundation bureaucrats, and expressed tins opinion of
them:

But I have never been impressed by the superior wisdom
of the foundation heads and executive committees. The
heads tend to become arrogant; the members of the com-
mittees are, as a rule, far from the ablest scholars in the
country.^

The late Dr. Frederick P. Keppel, president of The Carnegie
Corporation, once said that the officers of foundations steadily
tend toward "an illusion of omniscience and omnipotence."

• Jbi d.t p. 27.
f p. 37.

THE FOUNDATION BUREAUCRATS 4?

Foundation bureaucrats have become a unique class. Professor
Colegrove testified that academicians "fawned” over them. The
late Professor Merriam, in his day perhaps the most powerful fig-
ure in the foundation world, once said: "Money is power, and for
the last few years I have been dealing with more power than any
professor should ever have in his hands.” * *

Dwight Macdonald gives a good view of these "philanthro-
poids,” or professional foundation administrators:

A philanthropoid*** is the middleman between the philan-
thropist and the philanthropee. His profession is the giving
away of other people's money, and he is the key figure in
most of today’s great foundations now that the original
donors are safely dead. Some two hundred and thirty people
are employed by the Ford Foundation. [Most of these oc-
cupy subordinate positions or are delegated to special work,
Macdonald continues.]

This leaves the forty-odd philanthropoids, who, for all prac-
tical purposes, are the Ford Foundation. They screen the
thousands of applications for grants that come in every
year; they look into new fields for spending; they think up
problems worth solving (the first problem a foundation
faces is what is the problem) and select the institutions or
the people to try to solve them; they carry on the nego-
tiations, often protracted, and the inquiries, often delicate,
that may or may not lead to a grant, and they follow up
the grants that are made; they dictate the systolic flow of
memoranda that is the blood stream of a modern foundation.
Through all these activities, and always subject to the final
vote of the trustees, the philanthropoids determine that
this enterprise of benevolence or scholarship shall be nour-
ished with Ford money, while that one shall not.f

* Ibid., p. 57.

t The Ford Foundation, the Men and the Millions — An Unauthorized Biogra*
phy (New York; Reynal & Co., 1956), pp. 95, 96. First published as a series

o£ "Profiles" in The New Yorker magazine.

50 POWER OF THE FOUNDATION

These philanthropoids, then, are the men with the power.
Wherever they go in academic circles, they are received with ex-
traordinary respect and listened to with concentrated attention.
The president of a great university will hang on their words, hop-
ing to catch some clue to the possibility of a substantial and badly
needed grant. A professor, eminent and loaded with deserved
honors, will listen deferentially to every word of this young man,
whose opinions on academic subjects, relatively untutored though
he may be, are of far more practical importance than those of his
distinguished listener. A mere suggestion by one of these young
men from the foundations can materially influence the direction
of a project proposed by an institution or an academician. And to
turn down a project suggested by this young man himself — that is
far too dangerous for any university or professor to consider
lightly. It is, indeed, rarely done. The risk is too great.

I think of several trustees of great foundations, men with whom
I happen to be acquainted and for whom I have great personal ad-
miration. They have genuine stature and deserve every bit of the
success and acclaim which they have earned by intelligence, en-
ergy, and common sense in their own industrial fields. They are
active or retired top executives of great corporations which were
built partly upon their executive ability. Their extraordinary ca-
pacities for direction, and their experience, qualify them for an
important voice-in-council in our society. They have, however,
only the most peripheral understanding of many of the fields of
activity in which their foundations engage.

They understand neither the lingo nor the substance of the ma-
terials with which academicians work in these fields after a life-
time of training. If they are convinced, for instance, by a foun-
dation executive that the foundation should enter the field of
"behavioral science" or "educational theory," they can do little
more than approve of the generality of appropriations for the
purpose and leave all else to the hired executives who presume to
know how to act as intermediaries between the trustees and the
field. The trustees are at sea. They have the intelligence but not
the time to absorb the subject. Thus, they cannot exercise judg-

THE PROBLEM OF BIGNESS 51

ment but must leave this to the professionals whom they employ.
Nor can they even check the work of the professionals. They can
only transfer their power to them and hope for the best.

Something is wrong with such a method of operation. Trustees
who direct great enterprises would never sanction methods of this
kind in their own organizations,

THE PROBLEM OF BIGNESS

In his Philanthropic Foundations , F. Emerson Andrews illus-
trates the financial power of a few big endowments. His figures
are based on the number of foundations listed in directories
(4,162), which is clearly a low figure; and upon an estimate of
aggregate wealth (§7, 000, 000,000) which is at least 2 billion too
low, but the comparisons he makes are, nevertheless, instructive.
Gf the 4,162 foundations listed, 77, in 1953, held 3 billion of the
aggregate of 7 billion in assets. Among the 77, six reported assets
of more than $100,000,000 each, their combined value being
$1,269,500,000. These giants are listed as Ford ($520,000,000),
Rockefeller ($318,000,000), Carnegie Corporation ($196,000,000),
W. K. Kellogg ($109,800,000), Duke ($108,000,000), and Pew
Memorial ($104,900,000).* Mr. Andrews listed another seven foun-
dations with assets running between fifty and one hundred mil-
lions each. Some other foundations are so closely allied in origin
with some of the big six as possibly to be bracketed with them.
Among these would be The Ford Motor Company Fund ($16,-

500.000) ; The Rockefeller Brothers Fund ($59,700,000); The
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching ($20,-

600.000) ; The Carnegie Institution of Washington ($65,100,000);
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ($20,600,000).

Of the big six, only Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Pew reported
assets at market value. Consequently, we have good reason to as-
sume that the combined value of the assets of the big six might be
well in excess of $4,000,000,000. It is probable that The Ford

• These six ate listed together because of size, not because of similarity of
operation. The investigation by the Reece Committee disclosed no criticism
whatsoever of the Kellogg, Duke, or Pew foundations.

52 POWER OF THE FOUNDATION

Foundation, for example, should have been listed at close to
$3,000,000,000, instead of a mere $520,000,000.

There is a powerful school of political scientists which contends
that bigness, per se, is a danger to society, It maintains that the
economic power of great corporations should be suppressed by
dissolutions and break-ups. Whole libraries have been written
about the alleged threat to the public welfare in the form of the
growth of giant enterprises. Congressional hearings on the prob-
lems of small business, on mergers and antitrust issues, and on
proposals to apply discriminatory legislation against large corpo-
rations, have filled tens of thousands of printed pages a year.

Under the influence of the antibigness philosophy, the Supreme
Court, in dealing with antitrust cases, has veered toward a posi-
tion that bigness, in itself, constitutes a restraint on competition,
There is thus a tendency to consider that bigness, in itself, when it
is capable of corrective restraint, is sufficient justification for re-
medial legislation, even when there is no actual evidence of unfair
competition or of collusion.

A subschool of the “antibigness” political scientist has recently
found a new problem-of-bigness to attack. Many corporations
which formerly engaged in only one activity have now seen the
wisdom of diversification and have entered various, sometimes un-
associated, industries. Some opponents of bigness now wish to
prevent diversification, even when the collateral activities of a
great corporation give it no preponderant or even commanding
position in the collateral industries. Their basic objection is no
longer “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade” but mere big-
ness and the fear of the aggregate power which goes with bigness.

There is a clear analogy between bigness in industry and big-
ness in the world of foundations. Each of the great foundations
can exercise influence in the field of ideas so powerful that it justi-
fies a fear of mere bigness. The argument can be made, as it has
been made in relation to Big Business, that it is not necessary
to prove that the power reposing in bigness has actually been
abused. It is enough to show that the power exists.

Professor Harold D. JLasswell of Yale is one of the academi-

THE PROBLEM OF BIGNESS S3

cians upon whom foundation patronage has been bestowed
lavishly. He is one of the influential "experts” in the social sci-
ences on whom foundation managers have so often relied for the
selection of projects and the allocation of funds. In 1956, his
prestige, largely on the basis of his position in the foundation
world, contributed to his election as president of the American
Political Science Association. It seems fair to assume that his in-
augural address, delivered in Washington in September 6, 1956,
may represent the position of social scientists enjoying foundation
support. Speaking of economic control Professor Lasswell asks:

Shall we rely upon a 30-40*50 rule to guide public policy in
regard to the permissible degree of market control per-
mitted to private interests? (For example: When one in-
terest has 30% control of output, shall it be subject to
special regulations designed to nullify . the side-effects of
power that go along with economic control? When one
interest rises to 40% shall we put governmentally appointed
trustees on the Board of Directors? At 50% shall govern-
ment trustees predominate?)

He says, further:

The same approach — the search for rules of proportion —
applies to every institutional and personality pattern in a
body politic. What are the optimum proportions of com-
munity resources to devote to elementary, intermediary,
advanced and ultra-advanced education? To research and
development in science and technology?

The validity of the political theory which opposes bigness in
business enterprises is, of course, subject to grave question. Such
enterprises operate in a competitive economy and under an effec-
tive system of counterweighing power, Business is subject to
checks and balances by pressures from labor, from competitive or
substitute goods and services, from government, and from the
political action of many citizen pressure groups. If, however, there
is any justice in opposing bigness in business enterprises, there is

54 POWER OF THE FOUNDATION

even more in fearing bigness among foundations. The generally
accepted practice of matched grants multiplies the impact of foun-
dation giving. This technique of fund raising results in a far-
reaching Gleichschaltung of public charity— a general adoption of
the policies of the large foundations which offer the matching.

Foundations owe their existence to the public. It makes a sacri-
fice to give foundations tax exemption, assuming that the public
will, in turn, be properly rewarded for its generosity through an
application of the tax-exempt funds to the public welfare. For this
reason, if no other, foundations must have the approval of the
public to carry on; the public, indeed, would be fully justified in
applying legislative restrictions on foundation operations where
there seemed to be danger to the public welfare. The problem of
foundation bigness per se may thus arise seriously to concern the
general public unless foundation managers become alert to the in-
herent dangers of bigness by avoiding, in the future, the tech-
niques of joint planning; of joint support of intermediary organi-
zations which thus achieve commanding positions in the world of
ideas; and of eliminating or destroying counterweighing competi-
tion in the support of ideas. The conformity which these tech-
niques foster is socially unsound and highly undesirable. It stems
partly from the use of a common group of “experts” and a com-
mon application of funds to the support of the intellectual fashions
of the day instead of applying the venture-capital theory equita-
bly by giving proportionately, at least, to the preservation of the
values of the past.

THE CORPORATE FOUNDATIONS

Related to the problem of bigness is that of the foundation created
and maintained by an individual business enterprise. Such foun-
dations are comparative newcomers on the American scene but
are rapidly increasing in numbers. There are now perhaps two
thousand of them. Their aggregate capital is very substantial. As
a corporation is granted an annual income-tax deduction of up to
five percent of its net income, for philanthropic donations, such
corporate foundations could grow to immense importance in our

THE CORPORATE FOUNDATIONS 55

society and could, indeed, even overshadow the individual-cre-
ated foundations in the course of time. Limited by lack of time
and funds, the Reece Committee made no attempt to study these
corporate foundations. Nor have I collected any material regard-
ing them. But any comprehensive study of foundations in their re-
lation to our society would have to take corporate foundations into
account.

The corporate foundations have, so far, escaped the type of
criticism leveled at some of the individual-created foundations be-
cause they have generally avoided controversy and have confined
themselves to direct grants and to objectives (often local) with
which the public could not well quarrel. But several interesting
criticisms of them have been made, which do merit consideration
by thoughtful students of the general foundation problem.

There is the basic concern of some regarding the operations of
juridical persons in the field of charity, in this instance juridical
persons created by juridical persons. That difficult and obscure
problem, I shall leave to the philosophers and jurists.

Two forms of criticism have appeared from within the corpora-
tions which have created foundations. Stockholders have objected
to the “dissipation” of profits through donations to a foundation
which, they say, are really the property of the owners of the busi-
ness, the stockholders. Labor, on the other hand, has sometimes
complained that, if the corporation is so affluent as to be able to
create and maintain a foundation of its own, it could afford to pay
higher wages.

A third form of complaint comes from competitors, who assert
the unfairness of enabling a great corporation, through the tax-
deduction vehicle, to advertise itself and promote public rela-
tions and, thus, to take unfair advantage of competitors. Com-
plaints of this kind have been registered against the Ford Motor
Company. On the other hand, a foundation can operate in reverse,
in regard to public relations. There was a time when many people
in the United States refused to buy Ford products because of the
antics of the Ford Foundation-created Fund for the Republic and
even for some of the acts of The Ford Foundation itself.

56 POWER OF THE FOUNDATION

A graver criticism lies in the fact that, while Federal laws pre-
vent combinations in business in restraint of trade, it is possible
for foundations to act in concert to the attainment of common ob-
jectives. Such objectives might conceivably be political, in which
event, combinations of huge foundations created by huge corpora-
tions could constitute a potential highly dangerous to our society.
It is to be hoped that those who manage the great corporations
will be alert to this danger and carefully avoid it.

3

THE CONCENTRATION
OF POWER

INTERLOCKS

Although the Cox Committee recognized that the responsibility
of a foundation trustee was “onerous to' the point that it would
seriously interfere with the work of the average business man/’ it
found it “understandable that the services of an outstanding man
should be sought by more than one foundation.*’ Its only serious
criticism of a concentration of trustee power was geographic. It
expressed the opinion that a “wider geographical distribution
would go far towards establishing greater public confidence in
foundations and would dispel much of the distrust which shelters
under the traditional fear of Wall Street.” Thus, the Cox Com-
mittee completely missed the point. What mattered was not that
foundation trustees were concentrated on the Eastern Seaboard
but that a pattern of interlocking operations existed at various
levels of management. The geographical location of the majority
of foundation trustees was of small consequence.

That interlocks among foundation boards existed was clear
enough. F. Emerson Andrews, in his Philanthropic Foundations ,
mentions two complex cases as evidence of the national promi-
nence of many foundation trustees. In one case, the foundation
had 20 trustees who held a total of 113 positions as trustees or
officers of other philanthropic organizations, or an average of 5.6
each. The range of outside positions ran from o to 14. The Board
of the other foundation which Mr. Andrews cited was composed

57

58 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

of 14 trustees, holding a total of 85 outside philanthropic positions,
or an average of 6 per trustee; the range being from o to 13. If,
as the Cox Committee held, a foundation trustee's job was "oner-
ous" to the point of "seriously interfering" with his business, one
wonders how any man could simultaneously fill thirteen or four-
teen philanthropic offices effectively and conscientiously.

Overlapping of foundation administrators is an old story. In his
foundation, John D. Rockefeller employed some of the same men
to whom Andrew Carnegie had entrusted his endowments. Dean
Rusk, speaking for the Rockefeller Foundation, explained that
consultation among foundations arose "from the desire on the
part of each one to use its funds to the best advantage.” He de-
fended discussions among foundation officers as a desirable means
of exchanging information, to avoid duplication of effort, and to
permit funds to be used wisely. However, the intimate associations
which Mr. Rusk lauds can be dangerous. They can operate to
force our culture into a uniform pattern. It would be far better for
society to face the occasional waste which lack of interfounda-
tion planning might cause than to take the risk of losing a
truly competitive intellectual climate. Indeed, there is similarity
between Mr. Rusk’s plea for cooperation among foundations and
the arguments given for industrial cartels and for regulated com-
petition— for that matter, with the rationale for a socialist planned
economy.

The men who operate foundations do have power often greater
than that of elected or appointed government officials. The law
applying to public servants is very strict in defining conflicts of in-
terest. They are held strictly to an exact loyalty. There are no simi-
lar limitations applying to trustees or officers of foundations. They
may support their pet causes. They may cause donations to be
made to institutions or funds on whose directive boards they sit.
They may be donors and recipients at the same time. They may
favor their friends or relatives and pay salaries and fees without
limitation. Hundreds of years ago, the Church introduced Tules
against nepotism. No such rules prevent those in control of foun-

INTERLOCKS 59

dations from using power to gain more power, through combina-
tions with others, mutual endorsements and support, and the many
subtle forms of collusion available to them under our foundation
system.

If there is need for clearing houses in educational, scientific,
and public pursuits, that does not justify a domination of these in-
stitutions by foundations and their staffs. To continue the wide-
spread practice of simultaneous directorships in grant-giving and
grant-receiving institutions is against the public interest. Absten-
tion from voting, where there is a conflict of interest, does not
adequately protect the public. The very presence of a trustee or
officer with dual allegiance can have an improper effect on the
foundation’s decisions. It seems fair to require individuals to
choose whether they wish to operate on one side of the street or
the other — as givers or receivers. Moreover, a switching back and
forth, frequently observed, seems highly undesirable. In the inter-
est of continuing a free market for ideas, the managements of
granting and receiving institutions should be carefully separated
and kept clear of any taint of conflict of interest.

The effective interlock which exists in the foundation world
finds expression in many ways, among them:

1. Trustees serving on more than one tax-exempt organiza-
tion, often both granting and receiving organizations;

2. Joint support and/or control by several foundations
of fund-receiving institutions, particularly "clearing-house
organizations" and scientific, educational, and public affairs
councils or associations;

3. Issuance of matched grants, or promises of grants with
the proviso that funds are to be supplied only if and when
others support the same project or cause;

4. Service of foundation personnel, simultaneously or in
short succession, on staffs of foundation-supported institu-
tions; and

5. Service of foundation officials (trustees or managers)

60 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

on government advisory boards, in control of government
policy or spending in fields identified with foundation phi-
lanthropy.

Their independent, uncontrolled financial power often enables
foundations to exert a decisive influence on public affairs. They
have a power comparable to political patronage. The propagan-
dists effects of this patronage can often reach far beyond the im-
mediate beneficiaries of foundation support. The emergence of
dominating agencies in various fields of learning and teaching
was a likely development. Foundations were originally created to
support existing institutions and to undertake certain “operating”
functions. Today, and all too frequently, new recipient organiza-
tions are created by foundations, or with their subsidy, while
needy and worthy existing institutions are ignored. The Ford
Foundation in its early years created many subfunds for research
and education which duplicated existing, similar organizations. In
the twenties, several influential scientific and educational councils
were set up jointly by cooperating foundations.

De facto, almost all major foundations insist on approving the
selection of personnel in the recipient organizations. They wish to
know who will spend their grants or benefit from them. An appar-
ent donation is often, in reality, a disguised financing of a founda-
tion department. It is attached to an outside institution or organi-
zation, but little is left to it to do except bookkeeping and related
administrative functions, Universities, hospitals, institutes and
learned societies sometimes supply nothing but their name labels
affixed to what is actually a pet project of foundation managers. In
effect, everything from the budget to the choice of ad hoc ap-
pointed professors or researchers is controlled and decided by
foundation officials.

The concentration of power has measurable influence on our
cultural life. The Social Science Research Council once published
a study of its own granting activities. This clearly showed a prefer-
ence for five of the largest universities in the United States. Simi-
larly, the National Science Foundation, an agency of the U.S.

INTERMEDIARIES AS JOINT INSTRUMENT 61

Government, found that the same foundation-sponsored institu-
tions had received the major share of hundreds of million dollars
of government contracts. Such a concentration of private support
by foundations and public support through government agencies
is distinctly to the detriment of higher education in our country.
Favoritism for institutions and for scholars of a few such institu-
tions tends to cause a migration of talent from the neglected to the
pampered universities and gives a few schools of higher learning
an 61ite character, at the same time reducing both the comparative
prestige and the potential of the others.

INTERMEDIARIES AS JOINT INSTRUMENT OF
SEVERAL FOUNDATIONS

Americans have never liked monopoly or a concentration of power
in private hands, free of public control. When they have found it
in the business world, they have legislated against it. They are not
likely to be pleased to find a quasi-monopoly operating in intel-
lectual areas which are not mere “ivory tower” but influence our
society very materially,

A system of interlocks among major foundations and associated
organizations has long existed in social-science research and edu-
cation. No group of men sat down deliberately to plan this thing
over-all. It just grew into being, but it is none the less dangerous
as a concentration of power. It came about largely through the use
of intermediary organizations to which foundations could donate
wholesale funds for retailing grants. The system was so convenient
and intriguing that clearing houses were brought into existence
further to amplify this system of delegation.

What seemed to justify the use of these intermediaries was the
belief that they would bring about greater efficiency. In a way,
they did. Each specialized in some field of research or of social ac-
tion and often could act with more detailed understanding than
could the contributing foundations which scattered their interest
over large areas. On the other hand, as Professor David N. Rowe
testified before the Reece Committee, efficiency is by no means the
most desirable factor in research. Moreover, by using the conven-

62 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

ience of intermediaries, to delegate power and thus to escape the
arduous duty of detailed programming and selection, the trustees
of a contributing foundation removed themselves further from the
ultimate results of their expenditures, and were less and less able
to follow and check the application of their funds.

In large industrial enterprises and in government, the delega-
tion of authority is an essential management device. The proper
use of the same instrument in the area of ideas has distinct and
narrow limitations. In industry and government, the delegation is
one of operational responsibility within the framework of a given
value system, the policy of the organization. That is quite differ-
ent from the form of delegation all too often employed in founda-
tions. Here, in effect, the delegation is of actual policy decisions.
These policy decisions may deeply effect our society.

No better example of this could be found than the case of The
Institute of Pacific Relations, to which I have referred, used by
The Rockefeller Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation, The Car-
negie Endowment for International Peace, and others as a distrib-
uting agent. The Institute became the specialist in the Far East.
The tragedy was that it also became a specialist in promoting the
Communist cause in Asia, succeeding so well in this endeavor be-
cause of the vast financial support given to it by the major founda-
tions.

The donating foundations sought to absolve themselves of re-
sponsibility for what resulted. But, as Professor Rowe stated in his
testimony,* the granting foundations cannot escape responsibility
for what their agents have done. They granted these agents great
power, a power immensely enlarged when foundations, acting in
concert, supplied such substantial financing that the intermediary
agent became a dominating force in its specialized area.

The potential power of the major intermediaries was illustrated
by Professor Rowe in his testimony. I had asked him whether the
intermediary system did not operate against the competitive fac-
tor which is intrinsic in our American way of life. He testified:!

# Report, p. Go.
f/Wd., p. 59.

INTERLOCK IN FINANCING SOCIAL SCIENCE 63

There is no question but what an organization like The
Social Science Research Council has a tremendous amount
of power. This power which it exerts, it exerts very heavily
on educational institutions and their personnel because when
you get down to it, who is it that does research in social
science? It is educational institutions, because they have the
faculties in the various fields, like political science, econom-
ics, anthropology, sociology, geography and so on. That is
where the people are.***

This, therefore, means that there is a tremendous respon-
sibility here to apportion their awards in a just way — in such
a way as takes into account the differences of approach and
the differences of opinion in these fields; the theoretical
differences from one school to another. The possibility exists
that at all times in any of these organizations that the
people in charge thereof become convinced that there is one
way to do a job in the social science field , and that only this
way will get their support . If and when that time comes —
I don't know whether it is here or ever will come — then
you will have a combination in restraint of trade within
the limits of public acceptability that may have very del-
eterious effects upon our intellectual community . [Emphasis
supplied.]

WHAT MAKES UP THE INTERLOCK IN THE FINANCING
OF SOCIAL-SCIENCE ACTIVITIES

The report of the Reece Committee described the '‘network or
cartel” in the social sciences* as having five components. The first
is a group of foundations, composed of the various Rockefeller
and Carnegie foundations, The Ford Foundation (referred to as
“a late comer but already partially integrated”), The Common-
wealth Fund, The Maurice and Laura Falk Foundation, The Rus-
sell Sage Foundation, and others.

The second component consists of the “intermediaries” or
'‘clearing houses,” such as:

* Ibid., pp. 45-47,

64 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

The American Council of Learned Societies
The American Council on Education
The National Academy of Sciences
The National Education Association
The National Research Council
The National Science Foundation
The Social Science Research Council
The Progressive Education Association
The John Dewey Society
The Institute of Pacific Relations
The League for Industrial Democracy
The American Labor Education Service

The learned societies in the several “social sciences” were listed
as the third component.

The fourth consists of the learned journals in these areas.

The fifth was “certain individuals in strategic positions, such as
certain professors in the institutions which receive the preference
of the combine.”

The report proceeded:

The patterns of interlocking positions of power may take
various shapes. The following are the most frequent ones:

(1) Trustees or employed executives are successively or
simultaneously trustees and executives of several founda-
tions.

(2) Trustees or executives serve successively or simul-
taneously as officers of other tax exempt organizations re-
ceiving grants and/or retailing the wholesale grants from
their own foundations.

(3) Trustees or executives accept appointments to posi-
tions of power in control of education and/or charity so as
to multiply their influence beyond the budgetary powers
of their foundation resources.

(4) Foundations jointly underwrite major projects, thus
arriving at a condition of coordination restraining compe-
tition.

INTERLOCK IN FINANCING SOCIAL SCIENCE 6S

(5) Foundations jointly create and support centralized
coordinating agencies that operate as instruments of control
by claiming supreme authority in a field of education,
science, the arts, etc. without any resemblance of democratic
representation of the professionals in the management of
these agencies.

(6) Rather than distribute money without strings at-
tached, foundations favor projects of their own and supply
the recipient institutions not only with the program, but
also with the staff and the detailed operations budget so
that the project is actually under control of the foundation,
while professionally benefiting from the prestige of the
recipient institution. The choice of professors often is one
by the foundation and not one by the university. Founda-
tion employees frequently switch from work in the founda-
tion, or in the councils supported by the foundation, to work
on sponsored projects and in professional organizations sup-
ported by their funds. They become most influential in the
professional organizations, are elected to presidencies and
generally rule the research industry.

As an example of interlocking directorates, the report cited the
case of The Rand Corporation. This is a corporation in the nature
of a foundation, which plays a very important part in government
research. It would warrant special attention in connection with
any study of the extent to which foundation interlocks have influ-
enced government. Among the trustees and officers of The Rand
Corporation were found the following who had material connec-
tions with other foundations;

Charles Dollard (trustee) Carnegie Corporation

L. A. Dudbridge (trustee) Carnegie Endowment

National Science
Foundation

H. Rowan Gaither, Jr.

(trustee) Ford Foundation

66 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER.

Philip E. Mosely (trustee)
Harvey S. Mudd (trustee)

• i

Frederick F. Stephan (trustee)
Clyde Williams (trustee).

Hans Speier (officer)

Ford Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
Mudd Foundation
Santa Anita Foundation
American Heritage
Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation
Batelle Memorial
Institute

(Ford) Behavioral Science
Division

This example of interlocking is specially interesting because the
Chairman of this semi-governmental organization, The Rand Cor-
poration, was, at the same time, president of The Ford Founda-
tion, which granted it one million dollars in 1952 alone.

The following list of social-science consultants serving the Re-
search and Development Board of the Defense Department at one
time (1953) illustrates the frequency with which foundation exec-
utives are appointed as “experts” controlling the expenditure of
government funds in research:

Leland De Vinney
John W. Lardner
Pendleton Herring

William C. Menninger
J. A. Perkins
Don K. Price

Rockefeller Foundation
Carnegie Corporation
Social Science Research Council
(formerly, Carnegie
Corporation)

Menninger Foundation
Carnegie Corporation
Ford Foundation

Closely allied to the practice of interlocking directorates (and
.interlocking advisers and executives) is the practice of the major
foundations of favoring a limited number of institutions and indi-
viduals. Mr. Andrews, in his Philanthropic Foundations, defends
this practice by saying that "adequate research facilities and the
ablest personnel are largely concentrated in these places.” If this

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 67

were so, then the foundations have contributed to an unbalanced
condition, and the country would be better off if they reversed
themselves and sought to bring up the standards of neglected in-
stitutions by being more generous to them in their research allot-
ments.

Mr. Andrews's explanation does not seem persuasive. The most
favored institutions (Harvard, the University of Chicago, Colum-
bia, California, Yale, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and MIT seem
usually to head the list) are not in a class by themselves. I am not
sure what Mr. Andrews refers to in mentioning “adequate re-
search facilities"; whatever equipment may be needed for social-
science research could be rented readily enough. But Mr, An-
drews's contention about “the ablest personnel” would be hotly
contested by many informed academicians, among them Professor
Colegrove who, in his testimony before the Reece Committee,
pleaded for a wider, as well as a greater, use of our colleges and
universities. Pie said there is “a wealth of brains, a wealth of com-
petence, in our small colleges and universities, which does not
have its share in research grant^ at the present time,”*

The preference extends not: only to selected institutions them-
selves but even to graduate students in them. For example, the
Social Science Research Council, in 1952, reported that 856 gradu-
ate students working for a degree had received Council grants. A
total of 47.6 percent went to students at Columbia, Harvard, and
the University of Chicago. Add Yale, the University of California,
and Wisconsin, and students at these six received an aggregate of
63.4 percent of the grants. Students at a total of 16 institutions re-
ceived 89.1 percent of the grants, while 93 others rccciyed, among
them, only 10.9 percent; and the more than a thousand remaining
institutions received none. If any Catholic institutions were repre-
sented in the SSRG list, I missed them.

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

“Foundations,” said the Reece Committee report, “becoming more
numerous every day, may some day control our whole intellectual

• ibid., p. 80.

68 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

and cultural life — and with it the future of this country. The im-
pact of this interlock, this intellectual cartel, has already been felt
deeply in education and in the political scene.”

The report then discussed The Social Science Research Coun-
cil,* taking it as an example of the ‘'association or individual foun-
dations with one of the intermediary or executive foundations” —
another form of interlock. Among the foundations which have
supported this distributing agent are these:

The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial
The Russell Sage Foundation
The Carnegie Corporation
The Commonwealth Fund
The Julius Rosenwald Fund

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
The Maurice and Laura Falk Foundation
The General Education Board (Rockefeller)

The Grant Foundation

The Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Prob-
lems

The American Philosophical Society

The John and Mary R. Markle Foundation

The Ford Foundation

The Twentieth Century Fund

The East European Fund

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund

With support such as this, and even government support, it is
no wonder that The Social Science Research Council has become
the greatest power in social-science research. Its 1929-1930 annual
report disclosed some pride in the fact that it has been closely in-
terlocked in an important network:

With our sister councils, the National Research Council, f
the American Council of Learned Societies, and the

* Ibid.j p. 47 et seq.

| Active in the natural sciences.

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 69

American Council on Education, cooperation remains
good and becomes increasingly close and significant. There
are interlocking members and much personal contact of the
respective staffs. (Emphasis supplied.)

Despite many such acknowledgments as this, representatives of
the foundations and their intermediaries have firmly denied the
existence of an interlock. These denials cannot be sincere. There is
a mass of evidence to indicate the close working-together to which
the SSRC report quoted above alluded. Professor Colgrove testi-
fied that there was a tendency by the clearing houses to move to
Washington and to cause their “constituent” societies to move
there also. This concentration in one city improves efficiency —
efficiency in a “cooperation” which goes far beyond the ordinary
connotations of that term. Professor Colegrove said:

* * * There is more day-to-day conversation and consulta-
tion between the officers of the professional societies and the
officers of the operating societies, like the American Council
of Learned Societies, and the officers of the foundations.

I think the officers of the professional societies are extremely
good listeners and follow pretty carefully the advice that
is given them by the foundation officers.

Professor Colegrove also said that there had been a conscious con-
centration of research direction through the clearing-house or-
ganizations.*

The intermediaries are not merely distributive agencies in the
simple sense. They assume a directive function. This is indicated
by a statement by Messrs. Donald Young and Paul Webbink in
Vol. i, issue No. 3 of ItemSj a publication of The Social Science
Research Council, in which these gentlemen present the role of
the SSRC in improving research:

The particular role of the Council, however, is that of a
central agency to promote the unity of effort in attacking
social problems which is required to assure maximum re-

# Ibid., pp. 47-48,

70 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

turns from the work of a multitude of individual social
scientists and of independent private and public institutions.

They continued that the Council does not “attempt to operate as
a coordinating agency in any compulsive sense.” However, its
very availability and the wide support given to it by major foun-
dations have actually given the SSRC a control over research in
the social sciences which is, said the report of the Reece Com-
mittee, “in its effective use, undoubtedly compulsive,”

Dr. Pendleton Herring, president of The Social Science Re-
search Council, proudly quoted, in the September 1950 issue of
Items, this statement of The Ford Foundation:

The Social Science Research Council has been included in
this program because it is the instrumentality most used
by individual scholars, universities and research organiza-
tions for interchange of information, planning and other
cooperative functions in the fields described. * * *

The Ford grant was not, therefore, to be used for the support of
more independent research projects, but to help pay the SSRC
overhead to “enhance the service it performs for other organiza-
tions and scholars.”

The Reece Committee report described this sociographic pat-
tern of operations in the SSRC:

Constituent societies :

Represented at various other nationwide “councils.”
Financial support :

By closely cooperating foundations, which themselves in-
terlock through directorates.

Supported scholarly activity.

Concentration on graduates of a few major institutions,
which also supply most of the directors of the Council,
who since a change of by-laws are chosen by the Council
board, not any longer freely elected by constituent as-
sociations.

Influence of government spending for research:

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 71

SSRC or similar foundations-supported groups decisively
influence National Science Foundation policy and Defence
Department spending on research via its officers serving
as consultants and board members.”*

The Committee was impressed with the peculiar form of man-
agement within The Social Science Research Council. As is the
case in foundations generally, the management is self-perpetuat-
ing. The SSRC, however, purports to represent seven of the indi-
vidual social-science disciplines through their respective profes-
sional societies. Its stationery gives this impression, which is mis-
leading. These societies are not actually members of the SSRC.
They are permitted to elect directors to the SSRC Board, but only
from among panels. of candidates nominated by the SSRC itself.

This practice cannot help but produce conformity to the ideas
of the clique which rules The Social Science Research Council. It
was introduced in substitution for an earlier system of permitting
the professional associations to elect representatives of their choos-
ing. They are no longer permitted to select such as they believe
competent and wise, but only from among those nominated by the
clique.

The Reece Committee held this to be a rather undemo-
cratic procedure, to say the least. It pointed out that the total-
itarian character of this organization, so important in social-science
research in the United States, is increased by the fact that its
‘'members” are not the societies which it purports to represent but
its former directors. One of these directors explained that the
change in the election rules arose from the need to exclude “old-
fashioned” social scientists who would oppose the preference for
statistical and empirical projects.

It is easy to see, in this peculiar organization of the SSRC, an op-
eration of the “£lite” concept. If the assumcdly “constituent” pro-
fessional societies were permitted freely to elect the management
of this centralizing organization, those who control it might lose
their power. But they are the “£lite.” They want on their board a

• Ibid., p. 48.

72 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

clear majority, or even a unanimity, of social scientists who agree
with their theses. Do they not know better than others, better even
than the membership of the professional societies of social-science
professors, what is good for the country! It is not a pleasant con-
cept under American traditions,

The Reece Committee report found that

the SSRC has in the past gained leadership, among other
reasons, because it successfully created the impression of
representing the majority of all social scientists in America.

In a democratic sense, at least, the SSRC did not represent Ameri-
can scholarship in the social sciences. It thrived, however, by giv-
ing the impression that it did. Its power grew as the impression
mounted and as it became a constant beneficiary of major foun-
dations.

“The power of the SSRC,” said the Reece Committee report,
“seems to be used to effect control of the field of social sciences.”*
This statement was not lightly made. “There is evidence,” said the
Committee, "that professional appointments all over the United
States are influenced by SSRC blessing."

One example is sufficiently powerful to justify the statement.
The 1933*1934 report of the National Planning Board was actually
prepared by a committee of The Social Science Research Council.
It stated:

The Council [the S&RC] has been concerned chiefly with
the determination of the groups and persons with whom
special types of research should be placed.

Keeping in mind that this organization, The Social Science Re-
search Council, is supported by a group of major foundations, the
hazards involved are significant. If it has the function which was
described, of deciding what groups and individuals should be
used for various research projects, it has a control power which
carries with it enormous danger.

The Committee suggested a special investigation of the extent

• Ibid., p. 50.

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 73

to which The Social Science Research Council and organizations
associated with it control book reviews and the literary production
— journals, textbooks and other publications — of social scientists.
It is a characteristic o£ the American world of scholarship that
academicians are rated largely on their publications, and the test
is often quantitative rather than qualitative. Whether or not a
social scientist can procure publication of a paper has a lot to do
with his advancement in his career. Similarly, the nature of the
reviews given to his paper may be of vital importance.

Professor Rowe,* testifying regarding the influence of founda-
tions in educational institutions, said:

* * * you have to realize * * * that advancement and pro-
motion and survival in the academic field depend upon re-
search and the results and the publication thereof. Here you
have, you see, outside organizations influencing the course
of the careers of personnel in universities through their con-
trol of funds which can liberate these people from teaching
duties, for example, and making it possible for them to pub-
lish more than their competitors.

If, then, control over an academic journal is concentrated in a
few hands, it would be easy enough to impose concepts and phi-
losophies on a generation of scholars, and upon school teachers
and textbook writers. In more than one instance this has undoubt-
edly happened. Such control may take the form of denying space
to a nonconformist. It may also influence commercial publishers
via the expert readers to whom books are submitted before pub-
lication. It is very likely that these experts would be selected from
those favored by the journal. Publishers may be reluctant to pub-
lish a nonconformist’s book because the conformists, articulate
and welcomed in the pages of a professional journal, may pan it
with unfavorable reviews or freeze it out of circulation by with-
holding reviews in the controlled learned journals and in book-
review sections. The controlling group has the power forcefully to
recommend books for purchase in public and school libraries and

• Ibid., p. 50,

74 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

to advocate the use or rejection of selected textbooks. All this can
add up to conformity. Instead of supporting such power, founda-
tions bear the duty to exercise the greatest care, lest their funds be
used for such ends of thought control.

There are other groups powerful in the social sciences besides
The Social Science Research Council — The (Ford) Behavioral Sci-
ence Fund, The Twentieth Century Fund, The American Acad-
emy of Political and Social Sciences, and others — but, as the Reece
Committee pointed out, “with almost all of them there exist per-
sonal and organizational ties and cross connections via supporting
foundations.” There is, in fact, a similarity of approach among
these groups. They all favor the “liberal” point of view. It is possi-
ble that this could be mere coincidence, but it is extremely un-
likely.

President Grayson Kirk of Columbia University, in an address
of May 31, 1954, wisely asserted that we “must maintain the
greatest possible opportunities for the free clash of opinions on all
subjects, trusting to the innate good judgment of men and women
to reach decisions that are beneficial to society.” Anything in the
nature of a concentration of power or an interlocking is pregnant
with the possibility of coercive influence.

The Reece Committee was shocked to find that one so important
in the foundation world as Charles Dollard, then president of the
powerful Carnegie Corporation, had contributed an article to the
Social Science Research Councils publication, Items, in which,
referring to mistakes in poll taking and in the Kinsey research, he
made this statement:

The third strategic move which I would suggest is that
social science initiate a more rigorous system of internal
policing.*

That social scientists financed by foundations may have per-
formed sloppy work is apparent enough, but the Reece Committee
found the concept of “policing” terrifying. Who would do the po-

# Ibid., p. 51.

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 75

licing? The Social Science Research Council? Some board of cen-
sorship?

Efficiency might be increased by a system of "policing.” But it
would be at the cost of freedom, so precious in academic and in-
tellectual fields. Researchers might easily be squeezed into a com-
mon mold. “Few," said the Reece Committee report, “could risk
criticizing, few academicians at least. There would emerge what
has been called a ‘Gresham’s Law in the field of professorships in
the social sciences.* ”

Whatever reasons may have been in the minds of those who
created them, the “cartel bureaus” have, to all practical purposes,
assumed the functions of accrediting agencies. The growing tend-
ency toward Gleichschaltung (elimination of nonconformism) in
our schools and professional societies is exhibited by the current
preference for "projects.” Money is more easily obtainable today
for "projects” chosen by foundation boards than for general
purposes with no strings attached. The school administrator
approaching a foundation, hat in hand, and eager to propose a
project which conforms to die known leanings of the foundation
executives, is a sad product of our age. No longer does the scholar
carry the initiative. He is degraded to a recipient of alms handed
out by an almoner who is no longer responsible to the prince.

Power is often exerted by foundations to promote projects,
rather than to support institutions, because of the desire of man-
agers to do business in public, to publicize themselves and their
sendees.

The Reece Committee report ended its discussion of The Social
Science Research Council by admitting that this organization, like
others within the "concentration of power” or interlock in the so-
cial sciences, can "point to admirable and valuable work which
they have done.” These organizations have a great deal to their
credit. But they have also exercised control and a restrictive influ-
ence on scholarship in many ways. Moreover, they have become a
power the existence of which, "dealing with public trust funds,”
seemed to the Committee "to involve at least a potential danger

76 THE CONCENTKAlivjN OF POWER

or risk, however benevolently to date its relative despotism may
have acted/’ #

THE AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION

The American Council on Education is an intermediary to which
the Reece Committee also gave special attention.f It is a council
o£ national education associations, financed by membership dues,
by government contracts, by heavy contributions from major
foundations, and by donations of associated organizations.
Among its supporters have been:

The General Education Board (Rockefeller)

The Carnegie Corporation

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Ford Fund for Adult Education

The Alfred P. Sloan Fund

The Payne Fund

B'nai B’rith

The Edward W. Hazen Foundation

The Grant Foundation

The Ellis L. Phillips Foundation

I have used the term “clearing house/' The American Council
on Education has called itself that in a pamphlet issued in July

1953J:

More specifically, the Council has been a clearing house for
the exchange of information and opinion; it has conducted
many scientific inquiries and investigations into specific ed-
ucational problems and has sought to enlist appropriate
agencies for the solution of such problems; it has stimulated
experimental activities by institutions and groups of institu-
tions; it has kept in constant touch with pending legislation

# Ibid., p. 51.

^lbid., p. 52 et seq.

X“A Brief Statement of the History and Activities of the American Council
on Education”

AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION 77

affecting educational matters; it has pioneered in method-
ology that has become standard practice on a national
basis * * *; it has acted as liaison agency between the
educational institutions of the country and the federal gov-
ernment and has undertaken many significant projects at
the request of the Army, Navy and State Departments
and other governmental agencies; and * * * it has made
available to educators and the general public widely used
handbooks, informational reports, and many volumes of
critical analysis of social and educational problems.

The same pamphlet reports on the Council's Research Policy
Committee as follows:

Established 1952 to study the interrelationships of spon -
sored research from the viewpoints of federal agencies,
industries , and foundations , sponsoring such research , and
the effect on institutions doing the research. This latter
angle involves the distribution of grants among institutions
and the concentration of research in fields at the expense of
other fields and the distortion of the institutional picture as
a whole . The magnitude of the problem is shown by the
fact that 20 or more federal agencies are currently sub-
sidizing more than $150,000,000 worth of research a year;
industrial and business concerns and private foundations

• also sponsor research.

The numerous "special interests” involved may approach
the same problems in different ways and come up with dif-
ferent solutions. It is the aim of this Council committee — •
composed of college presidents, vice-presidents for research,
business officers, and faculty members directly engaged in
sponsored research projects — to attempt to formulate a pol-
icy for the national level based on cooperative relationships .
(Emphasis supplied.)

Thus, this Council, like The Social Science Research Council, is
an interrelating or coordinating agency, which establishes policy

78 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

and acts as a distributing agent for foundations whose business is
grant making, along planned and integrated lines. Again, we have
the emphasis on “efficiency,” as though this were the most desir-
able objective in research. The Reece Committee report com-
mented*:

As Professor Rowe and others have said: it would seem far
better to lose efficiency and give individuals of quality the
opportunity to go in their own respective directions unham-
pered by any group control, direction or pressure.

However laudable much or most of its work may have been,
the Council has certainly been one of the media through
which foundation funds have been used to effect consider-
able control or influence over education in the United States.
Some may argue that this control or influence has been
wholly good — were this so, we would still believe that the
power of great foundations to affect educational policies
and practices is one which should concern the public. By
the same token, we believe that “clearing house1’ organiza-
tions, while they may serve a purpose in the direction of
efficiency, are of questionable desirability when interlocked
financially or by personnel with these foundations. The
aggregate power involved in Such a concentration gives us
concern.

OTHER ASPECTS OF INTERLOCK

The clearing-house organizations themselves are interconnected,
forming veritable associations of associations, and councils of as-
sociations and councils. Three times removed from their constitu-
ent individuals and institutions, these express the desire so preva-
lent among foundation executives to avoid duplication and to
bring in what they conceive to be order.

There is, for example, a Conference Board of Associated Re-
search Councils, through which The Social Science Research

OTHER ASPECTS OF INTERLOCK 79

Council, The American Council on Education, The National Re-
search Council, and The American Council of Learned Societies
get together “to facilitate action on matters of common concern,"
continuing “earlier informal consultations of the executives of the
Councils.” To whatever types of action this conference of councils
may be limited by its documents of organization, its meetings
nevertheless afford an opportunity for coordinated planning
through conferences of the respective executives.

A council to finance higher education has been created jointly
by the Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, and Sloan foundations, each
of which contributes $60,000 to it annually for a period of three
years. This money does not go to the direct support of higher edu-
cation. It pays for a staff under Mr. Wilson Compton which
spends its time advising industrial corporations and other donors
how to give money, and assisting institutions in their fund-raising
campaigns. These foundations have thus, in combination, created
another power position of influence in education.

Periodical meetings of foundation executives now take place in
New York, informal in nature, perhaps, for the purpose of dis-
cussing policy problems and determining common action.

De Tocqueville, in one of his famous observations about democ-
racy in America, reported with some amazement the propensity of
this nation for the formation of voluntary associations for common
ends. But he saw the working of democratic forces in this expres-
sion of freedom of assembly. The competing power of groups pro-
duced an effective method of checks and balances, preventing a
domination of the people by autocratic forces. The more recent
urge for nationwide, hierarchic, so-called clearing houses, fos-
tered by foundations, was not foreseen by De Tocqueville. These
are in reality instruments for ideological and political GleichschaU
tung. Is the difference essential, or only a matter of degree, be-
tween an organization of scientists or authors subject to the mone-
tary control of power cliques and the so-called associations and
academies operating in totalitarian countries? With good luck, an
American scientist may find an independent publisher and eman-

80 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

cipate himself from the clique’s financial control. But such cases
are rare and confined to men of great courage and of contempt for
economic rewards.

The United States government now spends far more money on
social-science research than do all the foundations combined.
This might constitute a counterforce to the influence of the foun-
dation complex were it not for the fact that, to a great extent, the
same persons who control or expend the funds of the complex in
the social-science fields also direct or advise on the expenditures
of the Federal government in these areas. It is not surprising,
therefore, that government agencies operating in social-science
areas have exhibited the same preferences and idiosyncrasies as
has the foundation complex. It is a case of Tweedledee and
Tweedledum — or, to put it another way, a condition of constant
exchange of men and ideas between the complex and government.

THE INFLUENCE OF FOUNDATION MANAGERS IN THE INTERLOCK

Almost all the executives within the foundation complex whom I
have met have been exceptionally pleasant and highly intelligent
men. My criticism of them is confined to their almost universally
common characteristic of permitting their social, intellectual and,
principally, their political predilections to affect their work as ad-
ministrators of public trusts.

When it has been called to their attention that an amazing
amount of conformity and uniformity exists in the operations of
the major foundation complex, apologists for these organizations
have sometimes suggested that this is not because of the prefer-
ences of the foundation managers. They say that this phenomenon
stems from a prevailing bias in favor of what is called “liberalism.”
These apologists tell us that the foundation executives follow the
fashions of the times; in this manner, they “play safe.” That may
be so. It is difficult, in a situation such as this, to establish a cause-
and-effect relationship with accuracy — to determine the extent to
which foundation managers have followed or created trends. We
do know, however, that the existing conformism within the social
sciences has been nurtured abundantly by foundation support.

INFLUENCE OF FOUNDATION MANAGERS 81

Foundation executives often pay lip service to nonconformism,
and pride themselves on their contribution to “new" and “un-
orthodox" ideas. But the cooperation among the managers within
the foundation complex does not favor the nonconformist. On the
contrary, it has produced an excess of mediocre, routine work.
Nor is much of what these managers point to as “new" and “un-
orthodox" really so. Most of it may have been “new" or “unortho-
dox" twenty or thirty years ago. These amazingly like-minded
men have contributed substantially to converting into current or-
thodoxy what were revolutionary ideas during the twenties. They
have supported for so long what they euphemistically call the
“New Deal" (but what is really a modified form of socialism)
that they are no longer capable of recognizing that other concepts
of value may be held bona fide by thinkers and scholars.

What these professionals choose to call themselves is of no con-
sequence. One maintained to me that he was a “conservative." Yet
he is one of the most radical-minded of the foundation managers.

A stereotyped bureaucracy has developed among the major
foundations and their satellite organizations. It has common ideas
both as to concepts of responsibility and business affairs. The
ideas and concepts of this bureaucracy are based heavily on the
assumption of a cultural lag — the need to adjust law, values, and
human affairs in general to a tempo dictated by our rapid techno-
logical progress. The adoption of this interpretation of society,
somewhat related to Marx’s economic determinism, impels its be-
lievers to strive for permanent and continual revolution, a posi-
tion not too easy to differentiate from the materialistic concept of
history.

They have become almost a guild, the bureaucrats of the foun-
dation complex. As the Reece Committee report said*:

The professionals, who exert so important an influence
upon thought and public opinion in the United States,
form a sort of professional class, an £lite of management of
the vast public funds available to their will. They can

• P. 37-

82 THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

scarcely avoid getting an exaggerated idea of their own
importance and becoming preoccupied with holding and
enlarging their roles.

Clearly enough, foundation executives are entitled to their po-
litical opinions as private individuals. If they were not acting in
concert, one could even excuse the impact of such political opin-
ions on their work as individuals within foundations. What is
wrong is permitting any Gleichschaltung or even the appearance
of it. Anything in the nature of a cartel-like coordination in educa-
tion and in such vital fields as foreign relations and the social-
science studies tends to reduce competition and, through a form
of collusion, to endanger the freedom of our intellectual and pub-
lic life.

The emergence of this special class in our society, endowed
with immense poioers of thought control, is a factor which must be
taken into account in judging the merits of contemporary founda-
tion operations. The concentration of power, or interlock, which
has developed in foundation-supported social-science research
and social-science education is largely the result of a capture of
the integrated organizations by like-minded men . The plain, sim-
ple fact is that the so-called “liberal” movement in the United
States has captured most of the major foundations and has done so
chiefly through the professional administrator class, which has not
hesitated to use these great public trust funds to political ends and
with bias.

4

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND
SCIENTISM

POLITICS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

In Chicago in 1949 a group of social scientists adopted the term
"behavioral sciences." They gave their reasons for selecting the
new term: "first, because its neutral character made it acceptable
to both social and biological scientists and, second, because we
foresaw a possibility of some day seeking to obtain financial sup-
port from persons who might confound social science with social-
ism." That confusion has existed in some minds is evidenced by
one legislator who said that social science was the pursuit of long-
haired men and short-haired women.

While such confusion may be amusing, foundation support in
the social sciences does take on special and serious importance.
Though much of the research and teaching in these disciplines
may have no relationship whatsoever to politics, legislation, or
even to public affairs, a large and vociferous sector of the social
scientists actively seeks to redesign our government and our public
life. It is difficult to understand how tax-exempt funds can prop-
erly be used to support the idiosyncrasies of these self-appointed
reformers. In the face of the weakness of the controlling tax law
which I have pointed out, it behooves foundations to exercise care
and restraint.

Here is an illustration of aggressive political-minded ness from
the words of one of the leaders of the foundation-supported social-
science world, Professor Harold D. Lasswell, in his inaugural ad-
dress as president of the American Political Science Association:

83

84 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

One of our professional responsibilities is to expedite the
development of more perfect institutions specialized to con-
tinual self-observation on a global scale * * * originating
policy alternatives by means of which goal values can be
maximized.

Professor Lasswell continues:

Compared with an entire university, which has become a
non-communicating aggregate of experts, each department
of political science can be a true center of integration where
normative and descriptive frames of reference are simulta-
neously and continuously applied to the consideration of the
policy issues confronting the body politic as a whole over
the near, middle and distant ranges of time. The profession
is advantageously situated therefore to take the lead in a
configurative approach to the decision process in society.
Where it plays this part, political science is the policy
science, par excellence . * * # Part of our role, as the ven-
erable metaphor has it, is scanning the horizon of the un-
folding future with a view to defining in advance the prob-
able import of what is foreseeable for the navigators of the
Ship of State. It is our responsibility to flagellate our minds
toward creativity, toward bringing into the stream of
emerging events conceptions of future strategy that, if
adopted, will increase the probability that ideal aspirations
will be more approximately realized.

■: If these involved phrases leave any doubt about the political in-
tention of social scientists of Professor Lasswell’s mind, their ac-
tions in association with government do not. Many of these schol-
ars, including Professor Lasswell, serve as “experts'* and advisers
to numerous governmental agencies. Social scientists may be said
to have come to constitute a fourth major branch of government.
They are the consultants of government, the planners, and the
designers of governmental theory and practice. They are free
from the checks and balances to which the other three branches of

POLITICS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 85

government (legislative, executive, and judicial) are subject. They
have attained their influence and their position in government
mainly through foundation support; and this support, in the
past, has been chiefly given to persons, institutions, and ideas of a
progressive-liberal, if not Socialist, coloring.

In a pamphlet entitled “Science as Morality/’ published by the
Humanist Press in 1953, George Simpson adds his voice to the
growing criticism of the peculiar fashions, the current orthodox-
ies, in the social sciences. He criticizes the retreat from morality
and the reliance on subsidy. He says: “It would seem that the re-
treat from morality by science is now full, for the dominant view
in social science today is that social scientists might well learn
from natural scientists how to achieve a new social status deriva-
tive from what can be subsidized rather than from what requires
investigation.” (P. 10.) He criticizes social scientists for surrender-
ing their birthright as analysts and critics of social structures and
for having become hired men doing little jobs for corporations,
fund-raising associations, magazines interested in market re-
search, and oddments of American culture. (P. 37.) More im-
portantly, he says:

Nor should sociologists continue to be solicitors of funds
from agencies who tell them what they want research done
on. Sociologists should make it possible to get funds for
research without selling their souls. * * * The ideology of
our so-called “applied” social research people appears to be
the same as that of the foundations or corporations who
give them money. Since many jobs are created this way, and
jobs (sometimes partly paid for with degrees) attract
graduate students and enhance sociology’s respectability, any
suggestion that this is the road to moral ruin sounds evan-
gelical to those sociologists who have long lingered with
Beelzebub. (P.43.)

Simpson recommends the giving of “unmarked” grants to uni-
versities and to professional societies of sociologists, to avoid
domination by foundations. The difficulty, he remarks, is that nei-

86 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

ther universities nor societies have prepared adequately for such
responsibility. "They have become so addicted to absentee owner-
ship of social research, that many sociologists would be unable to
find any research to do unless somebody told them what he
wanted done," (P. 43.) From his "liberal" point of view, he argues
that the subsidizers are afraid of "dangerous" topics, but he says
that the scholars themselves and not those who supply research
money should decide what research needs doing.

Simpson has this to say regarding the current preference for
empirical research:

To be sure, empirical research is absolutely indispensable
in reaching sociological conclusions. But empirical research
today has become a magical phrase; if you say you are do-
ing it, the gods bless you. Even if you are not doing it, it
is still good to say you are. But sociologists must regain
their respect for the necessity of sitting in an arm chair
long enough to know what they are going to do empirical
research on, what their hypothesis is, whether it is worth
prosecuting, what contribution to human knowledge they
intend to make, and, simply, to make their ideas clear.
Indeed, it may even be found profitable to read a book.
It is not good to attack a calculating machine or draw up a
questionnaire with little in our heads. The pendulum has
swung too far in one dii'ection. It is time to resynthesize
learning and techniques, theory and research, education and
thinking, morality and sociology, and even the Social
Sciences. (Pp. 44*45.)

THE EXCLUSION OF THE DISSIDENT

Dr. A. H. Hobbs of the University of Pennsylvania is a living ex-
ample of the danger of criticizing foundations and foundation
practices. He is only an assistant professor. He wryly calls himself
"the oldest assistant professor east of the Rockies." To the shame of
his university, he has been told in no uncertain terms by his su-

EXCLUSION OF THE DISSIDENT 87

periors there that he has no hope of rising in the hierarchy. Why?
Because he is a dissident.

The treatment of Professor Hobbs at the University of Pcnnsyl-
vania is a black mark upon the record of that great institution. It is
an outstanding example of suppression of academic freedom. Yet,
as far as I know, none of the “liberals" who cry out so loudly that
freedom is being suppressed whenever a Communist professor is
discharged have entered even the mildest protest against the per-
secution of Professor Hobbs, whose only sin has been to have an
independent mind and the strength of character to use it.

Behind the persecution of Professor Hobbs, and accountable for
it, lies the fact that the foundation-supported '‘concentration of
power" has been angered by his independence of mind and his
frank criticism. He has been a strong critic of many of the meth-
ods used in contemporary social-science research, methods which
the foundation complex has fostered.

Professor Hobbs, in his book The Claims of Sociology : a Cri-
tique of Textbooks , published in 1951, analyzed more than 100
leading textbooks on sociology used in high schools and colleges.
He discovered that practically all of them, in varying degrees,
were slanted toward collectivism. In the case of economics, Pro-
fessor Hobbs wrote:

Only a few (six) texts attempt to present an objective,
integrated view of the principles and processes which char-
acterize the economic institutions of the United States.
Characteristically, the major portion of the treatment of eco-
nomics is devoted to criticism, to emphasis on maldistribu-
tion of wealth and income, and to presentation of remedies
or alternatives for prevailing economic principles and proc-
esses.*

The single point of view taken by virtually all the examined
books was characterized by attacks on big business; adulation of
big government; emphasis on maldistribution of wealth (even at-

9 The Claims of Sociology, p, 81.

88 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

tributing to it the major cause for divorce); pleas for some sort of
modernization of religion to eliminate its “mysticism” and relate it
to “modern society”; and the development of a “humanitarian”
point of view. This “humanitarianism,” says Professor Hobbs, in-
volves;

lamentation about war, economic maldistribution, and in-
dividual unhappiness. It appears, however, to be secular, ma-
terialistic, short-term humanitarianism. It is “liberal” if the
term applies to doctrinaire criticisms of economic maldistri-
bution, of inequalities between sexes, classes and races, and
of social controls which inhibit each person’s full expression
of his own personality. It is not completely liberal, however,
if this term implies a tolerant historical perspective and a
balanced and unbiased presentation of controversial issues
in society. It is “objective” if this term applies only to
critical emphasis against institutions and traditions. It is
lacking in objectivity, however, in uncritical acceptance of
platitudinous remedies and goals for society. It is “scien-
tific” if this term includes a process of selection of only
certain aspects of quantitative data and certain types of
studies. It is not scientific if the term excludes the use of
unverified hypotheses in proceeding from unwarranted as-
sumptions to untenable conclusions.

Professor Hobbs is not alone in these criticisms. Many eminent
professors agree with him. But he has been one of those few who
have had the courage to express their opinions. Those who domi-
nate foundation-supported social-science research profess to ad-
vocate freedom of opinion, but they do not encourage the expres-
sion of opinions contrary to their own. They profess to advocate
“controversy” and assert their right to use foundation funds for its
promotion. More often than not, however, it is but one side of a
controversy that they wish heard, when it has political implica-
tions— the side to the left.

Professor Hobbs is a sociologist. He is brilliant and exception-
ally well informed. He is given to independent thought, a precious

FOUNDATION-FOSTERED SCIENTISM 89

commodity in our society. But he pays the price of independence.
He supports his family on the salary of a laborer. He stands as one
of the object-lessons to academicians: Conform or Be Damned.*

FOUNDATION-FOSTERED SCIENTISM

Professor Hobbs testified before the Reece Committee that the
many millions of dollars poured annually into “social-science” re-
search by some of the large foundations and their satellites or in-
terlocked organizations, such as The Social Science Research
Council, are largely wasted and unproductive of anything sub-
stantial or useful. But the waste involved was not his most severe
criticism. He gave example after example of such research which
offered a direct danger to our society. What goes under the name
of “social science” today is often quackery. It is what Professor

Hobbs called “scientism.” f

■

Underlying the prevailing approach to research and teaching in
the “social* sciences” is the concept that social problems can be
solved in the same manner as some physical problems, by a “scien-
tific” method. Obviously enough, the collection of certain kinds of
empirical data can be of enormous value. But overindulgence in
the concept that there is a “scientific” solution for social problems,
an overindulgence which some of the foundations have closely
fostered, produces absurdity and peril. Professor Hobbs pointed
out that the solution of social problems invariably involves the in-
tegration of intangible factors, such as love, patriotism, sentiment
and other elements which cannot be measured with calipers, a
slide rule, or an adding machine.

The jury-tapping project financed by The Ford Foundation,
conducted in connection with a “sociological” project of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, illustrates the danger of overindulgence in the
empirical approach. The problem of the project, I suppose, was to

• Professor Hobbs's persecution is described in E. Merrill Root's Collectivism
on the Campus and also is referred to in an article in the April 18, 1956, issue
of the National Review by Russell Kirk, in which the latter said, "Sociology is
thoroughly dominated by an entrenched orthodoxy,” an orthodoxy which
will not tolerate an independent mind such as Professor Hobbs's,
t $ee A. H, Hobbs, Social Problems and Scientism , Stackpole, 1953,

90 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

determine whether or not the jury system could be improved. To
go about this by eavesdropping on juries to find out how they
deliberate is fact-finding of a nature which is extremely dangerous.
The term “facts,” in itself, is misused by the overanxious empirical
researcher. Of what value is the well-known “fact” that jurymen
spend part of their time discussing the baseball scores, and that
much of their argument would hardly do on a debating team.
Have these “facts” any scientific fact-value? Are we to conclude,
through a collection of such “facts,” that jurymen are not compe-
tent to fulfill the function which our legal system has assigned to
them? Are such “facts” to be the basis of a plea that we should, in
some way, control juries to make them more attentive to duty, or
screen them to confine jury duty to those with a high I.Q.?

The jury-tapping procedure was an abortive attempt to solve a
problem through empirical “science.” If juries are to be abolished,
or the jury procedure radically amended, it should be only after
a most careful reconsideration of the historical origins and the
philosophical rationale of the jury as an institution and not upon
the basis of statistical “fact” collection by eavesdroppers. It may
well be that the jury system as it stands should be most carefully
preserved, even though jurymen represent only a cross-section of
intelligence and even if jurymen do waste time discussing base-
ball.

THE "SOCIAL ENGINEERS" AND THE "FACT-FINDING MANIA"

The “social scientists,” who have followed the course which has
been so widely encouraged with foundation money, have become
hypnotized, it seems, by the title of “scientists” which they have
misappropriated. They have concluded that only “social scien-
tists'' can solve our social problems. They have made themselves
into an “£lite” — they have called themselves “social engineers.”
They have been touched with the Fiihrer complex — they have be-
come convinced that they are qualified to lead us into better pas-
tures. How? Through the “scientific method.”

The Reece Committee found many expressions of this “£lite”-
“social engineering” concept among social-scientist writers and

"SOCIAL ENGINEERS" AND "FACT-FINDING MANIA" 91

publicists. Dr. Pendleton Herring, president of The Social Science
Research Council, expressed it this way in an article in the SSRC
Items of March 1947:

One of the greatest needs in the social sciences is for the
development of skilled practitioners who can use social data
for the cure of social ills as doctors use scientific data to
cure bodily ills.*

The “social doctors” have acquired a “fact-finding mania” —
they have gone overboard on empiricism. Trying to imitate the use
of the empirical method as one of the necessary tools of natural
science, they have all too often forgotten that the natural scientist
deals with measurable facts while the social scientist can measure
comparatively little ;f that the natural scientist sets up conditional
hypotheses and tests them through experiment, while the social
scientist can hardly experiment with human beings outside of a
totalitarian concentration camp.

As Professor Hobbs put it in his Social Problems and Sewn-
tismp

An over-emphasis on facts as facts is one of the characteristics
of what is sometimes called the empirical approach. Ideally,
empiricism could mean that the investigators relied solely
upon controlled observation and experimental evidence.
Actually, much of the empiricism in social science involves
no rigid experimentation, and the facts are questionable,
fragmentary, and slanted. Empiricism in social science
seems to owe its extreme popularity more nearly to des-
peration rather than plan. Philosophic and scientific jus-

# Recce Committee Report , p. 127.

4 Like Professor Hobbs, Professor Sorokin has pointed out sharply that, where
there are no units, the quantified qualities cannot be measured with any
scientific accuracy — measurements of them are "bound to be fictitious rather
than reai, arbitrarily superimposed upon the phenomena rather than giving
objective measurement of them." Again: "Where there are no units and
numbers, all the formulae and equations are either void or represent a sub-
jective ranking, weighing, and scoring by the devotees of a misplaced quanti-
fication." Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology, Regncry, 1956, Chapter
Seven,

X Ibid., p. 63.

92 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

tification for the type of empiricism generally employed in
social science is extremely tenuous. It seems to spring more
from a frantic effort to acquire the external appearance
of science and the accolade of “practicality” than to grow
out of any carefully thought out system of either philosophy
or science. * * * A belief appears to exist that somehow
empiricism is more advanced, more modern, than reliance
on reason and logic, such as rationalism involves.4

In his Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology, Professor Sorokinf
blasts the “illusion of operationalisin'* and the measuring-phobia
in social-science research. Among his most devastating arguments
against the excessive use of the empirical approach is the follow-
ing:

* * * if the operationalists had really studied how an
overwhelming majority of the most important scientific dis-
coveries, technological inventions, the greatest religious, phil-
osophical and technical verities, and the highest artistic
achievements really originated and grew, they would have
learned, first, that they were born in intuition; second, that
the intuitional idea was developed and elaborated by log-
ical and mathematical thought which was used in making all
the necessary deductions or consequences from the intui-
tional (or “postulational”) principle; and finally, that in
die field of science these deductions were tested by again
rationally devised experimental, inductive, or operational
method.J

• Professor Sorokin, In his Fads and Foibles in Modem Sociology, puts it this
way: “Most of the defects of modern psychosocial science are due to a clumsy
imitation of the physical sciences. • * * most of the numerous 'experimental'
studies in sociology and psychology are • • • pseudo-experimental, and
have a very remote relationship, if any, to real experimental method. • * *
we should by all means use a real experimental method in our studies where*
ever it can be applied, and the more it is used the better. But we should not
fool ourselves and others with sham-experimental procedures. They do not
and cannot contribute to the Teal knowledge of psychosocial phenomena. If
anything, they corrode the real experimental method and psychosocial science
itself."

•f- Chapter Three.
t pP- 35-36.

"SOCIAL ENGINEERS" AND "FACT-FINDING MANIA" 93

And again:

To abandon intuitional insight and logical thought in favor
of operational method would amount to castrating creative
thought generally, and in science particularly. Without in*
tuition and logic no real progress in science, religion, phi-
losophy, ethics, and the fine arts has been or will be possible.

Professor Sorokin ridicules the wide use of the poll-taking
method of operation, calling it unscientific, vague, indeterminate
and, more often than not, “hearsay” in its product,

Even their “hearsay” material is ordinarily collected not by
the investigators themselves, but by their assistants and hired
pollsters. Imagine physicists or chemists operating in this
fashion and then tabulating the collected opinions and giv-
ing the results in the form of various statistical tables and
Other paraphernalia to point to the “objectivity” of their
“scientific” and “operational” techniques,

Moreover, says Professor Sorokin, “what is true or false cannot be
decided by majority vote.”

“The tidal wave” of the quantitative, empirical method of re*
search is now so high, says Professor Sorokin, “that the contem-
porary stage of the psychosocial sciences can be properly called
the age of quantophobia and numerology ”

The “comptometer compulsion,” the “fact-finding mania” of
these foundation-supported “social scientists” induce them to ac-
cept the principle of moral relativity — that moral laws are only rela-
tive— “the facts” speak for themselves and must dictate moral law;
whatever "the facts” disclose is right.

The accepted moral law must be taken into consideration in any
attempt to find socially acceptable solutions to social problems. As
Professor Rowe testified: “Ideas and concepts and values are far
more important * * * than much of the indisputable, completely
noncontroversial factual material that political scientists seem to
occupy themselves with so much in the present day,”* But the

f Reece Committee Report , p. 65,

94 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

“social engineers’* who are dedicated to “engineering” us into bet-
ter ways reject this principle. Thus, if Dr. Kinsey concludes that
girls would be happier in the long run if their marriages were
preceded by considerable, and even unusual, sex experience, then,
say these “social engineers/* the moral and legal concepts which
proscribe it should be abandoned.

Nor, say these “social engineers,” are any political principles to
be accepted as basic. If, for example, a function can be more effi-
ciently exercised by the Federal government than by the individ-
ual states, it should be so exercised, regardless of the principle of
limited Federal jurisdiction which is fundamental to our system
and is our greatest protection against totalitarianism.

Nor, inasmuch as social “scientists” deem themselves exclu-
sively competent, are political principles to be determined by such
incompetents as lawyers, doctors, farmers, and businessmen. As
The Social Science Research Council said in its statement filed
with the Reece Committee, the social scientists

command the analytical methods for most effectively get-
ting at such questions in basic and tangible terms.*

And its 1927 report included among its aims:

to make possible the substituting of more scientific social
control for the rule-of-thumb methods which men have
happened upon in their effort to live together.-}-

One more quotation, again from Dr. Herring, the president of
The Social Science Research Council, in its first issue of Items:

Here we wish simply to emphasize that in our generation
efforts are being made to arrange and control human re-
lationships more consciously, more deliberately, and, it is
to be hoped, more responsibly than during the last
century. An interdependent world is being forced to an

# Ibid., p. 126.
j Ibid., p. 128.

"SOCIAL ENGINEERS" AND "FACT-FINDING MANIA" 95

awareness of the limitations of individual freedom and per-
sonal choice.*

With these quotations we can now finally understand the the-
ory of the "social engineers" in The Ford Foundation who ap-
proved of eavesdropping on juries. Those in charge of the jury
project were dealing with an aged institution, the jury, which had
been adopted by our society through "rule-of-thumb” methods
and not by the "scientific” method of which the social engineers
were allegedly capable. True, the jury is one of our fundamental
protections, almost universally approved by our lawyers, jurists,
statesmen, legislators, and public. But these are not "scientists.”
Only the social "scientists” are capable of understanding whether
the jury system is sound or not. This they can determine by get-
ting at "the facts.” So they were getting at the "facts” by violating
the privacy of jurors.

To make this situation doubly clear, I shall quote once more
from The Social Science Research Council, because it is, more or
less, the guiding spirit in social-science research. Its 1928-1929 re-
port discloses one of its purposes:

* * * a sounder empirical method of research had to be
achieved in political science, if it were to assist in the
development of a scientific political control.f

Political control is thus to be left in the hands of the "£lite,” the
"social engineers.” What the people want is not necessarily good
for them; they are not competent to decide. The FiXhrers must
decide it for them, so that we can have a scientifically based and
intelligent society.

The Recce Committee report quoted a distinguished professor,
Dr. Carl O. Sauer of the University of California:

In American social science it has indeed become a dom-
inant folkway to associate progress with putting the job
inquiiy into large-scale organizations, under formally pre-

m Ibid., p.126.
f Ibid., p. 185.

96 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

scribed methods, and with limited objectives. Having
adopted the name "science,” we are impressed by the
“Method of science” as inductive, quantitative, experimen-
tal. We are even told that such is the only proper method.*

This eminent academician minced no words in discussing the
part played by the complex composed of certain of the founda-
tions and intermediary organizations concerned with direct re-
search, such as The Social Science Research Council. He said:

A serious and delicate problem is posed by the growing
role of the national research council and foundation, the
last years having seen a continually increasing concentration
of influence.

And, he said, social scientists have developed

hierarchies of conference members who speak a common
language, obscured from us by its own ceremonial terms.
They become an 61ite, fashioning increasingly the direc-
tions and limits of our work, as they become more and more
removed from the producers.

The foundation-supported concept of “social engineering,” with
its political implications, was castigated by Professor Sauer in
these words:

Research programs are set up in terms of social goals, and
it is assumed that professional training provides the deep
insight needed. Having set up schools for the training of
prophets, it gratifies us to hear that the great task of social
science is to remake the world/}*

Among the material used by the Committee were letters re-
ceived from three of the leading sociologists of today, Professor
Pitirim A. Sorokin of Harvard, Professor Carle C. Zimmerman of
Harvard, and Professor James H. S. Bossard of Pennsylvania.
Professor Zimmerman went so far as to say:

• Ibid., p. 83.

•flbid., p. 84.

"SOCIAL ENGINEERS" AND "FACT-FINDING MANIA" 97

The tax-exempt foundations in the United States have un-
fairly and undesirably emphasized empirical research to
such an extent that the whole meaning of social-science re-
search has come to be ridden with sham and dubious prac-
tices.*

Professor Sorokin saidf :

The futility of excessively favoring this sort of research
[the empirical] particularly is well demonstrated by its
sterility — in spite of the many millions of dollars, enormous
amount of time and energy expended by research staffs.
Almost all of the enormous mass of research along this line
in the United States of America for the last 25 or 30 years
has not produced either any new significant social theory or
any new method, or any new technique, or any scientifically
valid test, or even any limited causal uniformity.

Professor Sorokin’s judgment of the sterility of most foundation-
supported social-science research is supported by an address,
“New Concepts in Education,” by Dr. Stuart A. Courtis, made to
the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
*95°' Part of which is quoted in the Reece Committee report]::

As a result we are today in possession of mountains of
quantitative data whose interpretation is not furthered by
our experiments, and we have discovered no laws as the
exact sciences know law. We possess only large masses of
quantitative conclusions nearly worthless for purposes of
prediction.

Referring to the mass production of research, Professor Sorokin
has said:

The research factories manufacturing such products have
become the dominant industry of sociological and psycho-

• Ibid,, p. 64.
f Report, p. 78.
t P. 63.

98 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

logical research. Their products are manufactured on a
mass scale, moving along the assembly line almost as me-
chanically as automobiles. As a result, scientific journals,
texts and monographs are filled mainly with this sort of re-
search. Its total volume has already become so large that
nobody, except "the All-Remembering, All-Indexing, and
All-Tabulating Electronic Robot," can know, remember,
and use this cosmic mass of research. Human scholars and
scientists can hardly master it; after all, human memory is
limited, and human life is too short. Moreover, it is not
certain whether these products are worth remembering.
Many real scholars refuse to waste their time and energy
in plodding through miles and miles of this monotonous
research. * * * Preoccupation with this time-and-fund-con-
suming research leaves little time for the researchers to
study more important sociocultural phenomena, or to ac-
quaint themselves with the vast fund of real knowledge
accumulated by hundreds of eminent social thinkers. In this
research industry the researchers have hardly any time
even for seriously thinking about the problems studied
and still less time for cultivating intuition or incisive ra-
tional thought, or for developing their minds generally. As
a result of this mechanized research industry, we have a vast
army of "research-factory hands” who, in the tenns of Lao-
Tze, "are never wise men, while wise men are never re-
searchers." No wonder, therefore, that this vast army has not
enriched our knowledge by many new discoveries or veri-
ties.*

Professor Bossard expressed his concern over the effect that the
recent emphasis (by foundations) on the "comptometer approach"
would have upon research. He wrote:

The monies and influence of the large foundations naturally
do a great deal to set the norms of professional acceptance
in a given field, and it is in this respect, difficult to measure

• Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology , pp. 299-300,

"SOCIAL ENGINEERS" AND "FACT-FINDING MANIA" 99

statistically but possibly of very great importance, that a
distinct disservice may be done to sociological research by
an undue emphasis upon any particular emphasis or meth-
odology.*

To quote Professor Sorokin again:

In the raging epidemic of quantophrenia everyone can be
"researchers” and "scientific investigators,” because every-
one can take a few sheets of paper, fill them with all sorts of
questions, mail the questionnaires to all possible respon-
dents, receive the answered copies, classify them in this or
that way, process them through a tabulating machine, ar-
range the results into several tables (with all the mechan-
ically computed percentages, coefficients or correlation,
Chi-Square indices, standard deviations and probable er-
rors), and then write a paper or a book filled with the most
impressive array of tables, formulae, indices, and other
evidence of "objective, thorough, precise, quantitative”
research. These are typical "rites” in "contemporary quanti-
tative research” in sociology, psychology, and other psycho-
social sciences. * * * Hence the rising tide of quanto-
phrenic studies in these disciplines. * * * The Nemesis of
such simulacra is sterility and error — and this Nemesis is
already walking abroad among the contemporary psycho-
social sciences.*}*

Similar statements were made by various academicians who
were reluctant to have their names disclosed for fear of reprisal
from the foundation world. One renowned professor of economics,
whose teachings conflict with the ruling interventionist school, a
man of worldwide prestige and of independent thought, stated to
me that no student of his could get a grant from any of the foun-
dations which form part of the complex (which the Reece Com-
mittee referred to as a "concentration of power”) because he does

• Recce Committee Report, p. 64.
f Fads and Foibles in Modern .Sociofogy, pp, 178-173,

100 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

not follow the comptometer school of research which the major
foundations promote.

The nonconformists and their students stand little chance of
receiving support for research from those foundations which have
delegated the selection of grant recipients to professional councils
which are strictly controlled by majorities adhering to the current
orthodoxies. It is no wonder that so much sterility has resulted
in social-science research fields. There is little controversy in such
kept “science.” Researchers work in a foundation-created cli-
mate which offers rewards for conformity and the penalty of
abandonment for dissent. The«.degrading effect of this upon the
academic world accounts for the general sterility of social-
science research in the United States.

ROCKEFELLER FINANCES DR. KINSEY'S SCIENTISM

Professor Hobbs rightly asserted that social scientists should
exercise the greatest care in informing the public when their
work is not truly "scientific." The very term “social science” im-
plies that their conclusions are unassailable because they are
"scientifically” arrived at There is the constant danger, then, that
laymen will take these conclusions as axiomatic bases for social
action. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the remarkable
number of writings which appeared after the publication of
the reports on the Rockefeller Foundation-supported Kinsey
studies.* With the assumedly “scientific" character of Dr.

•The Rockefeller Foundation's statement filed with the Committee explained
its connection with the Kinsey studies in this way. In igsi it "became in-
terested in systematic support for studies in sexual physiology and behavior."
It had become increasingly interested in the “life sciences” and less in the
"physical sciences.” And, it continued, "support for studies in reproductive
physiology and behavior constituted an obviously necessary part of this pro-
gram since the ability to reproduce is one of the elementary characteristics
of living organisms." Its woTk in these areas was chiefly in connection with
the "committee for research in problems of sex of The National Research
Council," to which, by 1954. the Foundation had granted $1,755,000, in
annual grants running from $75,000 to $240,000. Beginning about 1941, a con-
siderable portion of these funds was supplied to Dr. Kinsey’s studies, and one
grant was made direct to Dr. Kinsey. The NRC grants to these studies were
with the knowledge and approval of the Foundation.

The work of the NRC produced some results of truly noteworthy impor*

ROCKEFELLER FINANCES KINSEY'S SCIENTISM 101

Kinsey's work behind us, we had such things offered to the
public as this by one Anne G. Frcegood, in the September 1953
issue of Harper's:

The desert in this case is our current code of laws governing
sexual activities and the background of Puritan tradition
regarding sex under which this country still to some extent
operates.

Later on she wrote that the first Kinsey report “has already been
cited in court decisions and quoted in textbooks as well as
blazoned from one end of the country to the other/'

Professor Hobbs, in Social Problems and Scientism, p. 93, de-
scribed the aftermath of Dr. Kinsey's Rockefeller Foundation-
supported first report as follows:

“ •

Despite the patent limitations of the study and its persistent
bias, its conclusions regarding sexual behavior were widely
believed. They were presented to college classes; medical
doctors cited them in lectures; psychiatrists applauded them;
a radio program indicated that the findings were serving
as a basis for revision of moral codes relating to sex; and an
editorial in a college student newspaper admonished the
college administration to make provision for sexual outlets
for the students in accordance with the “scientific realities”
as established by the book.

Some of these Kinseyites have said that our laws are wrong
because they do not follow the biological “facts/' Published
reports such as those of Kinsey can do immeasurable harm when
they falsely pretend to disclose biological “facts.” A great part of
the Kinsey product is without basis in true “fact” and is mere
propaganda for some personally intriguing concepts.

tance and great value to society in the field of physiology. 1 intend no crit-
icism of the Foundation's grants in so far as they were used for physiological
studies. But the much-publicized ‘‘best-seller0 Kinsey studies base an ad-
vocacy of criminal and social reform on the very unscientific material which
Dr. Kinsey had collected and permitted to be widely disseminated.

102 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

Professor Hobbs pointed out that Dr. Kinsey ridiculed “so-
cially approved patterns of sexual behavior,” calling them ra-
tionalizations/' while usually referring to socially condemned
forms of sexual behavior as “normal” or “normal in the human
animal/' This presentation, said Professor Hobbs, “could give
the impression, and it gave the impression to a number of re-
viewers, that things which conform to the socially approved codes
of sexual conduct are rationalizations, not quite right, while
things which deviate from it, such as homosexuality, are normal,

in a sense right/’*

Professor Hobbs stressed the fact that such pseudoscientific
presentations could seriously affect public morality. Here is part
of his testimony:

For an illustration, in connection with the question of het-
erosexuality compared with homosexuality, Kinsey in the
first volume has this statement:

“It is only because society demands that there be a par-
ticular choice in the matter (of heterosexuality or homo-
sexuality) and does not so often dictate one's choice of
food or clothing."

He puts it in [these] terms . • « it is just a custom which
society demands.

In the second volume it is stressed, for example, that we
object to adult molesters of children primarily because we
have become conditioned against such adult molesters of
children, and that the children who are molested become
emotionally upset, primarily because of the old-fashioned
attitudes of their parents about such practices, and the par-
ents (the implication is) are the ones who do the real
damage by making a fuss about it if a child is molested.
Because the molester, and here I quote from Kinsey, “may
have contributed favorably to their later sociosexual develop-
ment/' That is, a molester of children may have actually,
Kinsey contends, not only not harmed them, but may have

• Recce Committee Report, pp. 69^0.

ROCKEFELLER FINANCES KINSEY'S SCIENTISM 103

contributed favorably to their later sociosexual development.
Especially emphasized in the second volume, the volume on
females, is the supposed beneficial effects of premarital
sexual experiences. Such experiences, Kinsey states: “pro-
vide an opportunity for the females to learn to adjust emo-
tionally to various types of males."

That is on page 266 of the volume on females.

In addition, on page 327 he contends that premarital sex-
ual experience may well contribute to the effectiveness of
one's other nonsexual social relationships, and that many
females — this is on page 1 15— will thus learn how to respond
to sociosexual contacts.

On page 328, that it should contribute to the development
of emotional capacities in a more effective way than if sexual
experiences are acquired after marriage.

The avoidance of premarital sexual experience by females,
according to Professor Kinsey, may lead to inhibitions
which damage the capacity to respond, so much that these
inhibitions may persist after years of marriage, “if, indeed,
they are ever dissipated." That is from page 330.

So you get a continued emphasis on the desirability of
females engaging in premarital sexual behavior. In both
these volumes there is a persistent emphasis, a persistent
questioning of the traditional codes, and the laws relating
to sexual behavior. Professor Kinsey may be correct or he
may be incorrect, but when he gives the impression that the
findings are scientific in the same sense as the findings in
physical science, then the issue becomes not a matter of
whether he as a person is correct or incorrect, but of the
impression which is given to the public, which can be
quite unfortunate.* (Hearings, pp. 129, 130.)

The special responsibility of The Rockefeller Foundation for
having financed the Kinsey “best sellers” comes sharply to roost
in this quotation from an article by Albert Deutsch in Harper's:

* Ibid p. 70.

104 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

So startling are its revelations, so contrary to what civilized
man has been taught for generations, that they would be
unbelievable but for the impressive weight of the scientific
agencies backing the survey .*

Note how impressive is the word ‘'scientific." And how false.
How dangerous to society if foundations support the theory that
social problems can be scientifically solved by mere interviewing
techniques. Apart from the doubtful veracity of the samples of
men and women questioned by Kinsey, his statistical methods
have been seriously criticized by organs of the American Statisti-
cal Association and several scholarly reviewers. But even if the
sampling had been representative of American attitudes on sex,
and even if all the persons interviewed had been willing to give
truthful answers and were psychologically capable of doing so,
it seems preposterous to propose that social change should be
justified upon empirical inquiry alone.

Should concepts of value (legal, religious, ethical ideas) be
abandoned merely because any number of men find them op-
pressive and neglect to live up to them? Are we justified in
advocating a change in the criminal law because certain types
of crimes are practiced widely? Shall we abrogate punishment for
speeding, for theft, for adultery, for fraudulent voting, for in-
come-tax evasion, if we find that such illegalities are practiced by
a majority? By twenty percent of our people? By eighty percent?
What percentage of our population must express itself, either by
response to interviews or by action, in favor of an illegality to
convince a social scientist that the law proscribing it should be
abrogated? Similar questions might be asked in relation to the
weighing of existing ethical concepts such as patriotism, respect
for parents and elders, and tolerance of dissidence.

The basic fallacy of the Kinsey approach and that of the ruling
research clique in the social sciences stems from a confusion be-
tween what is a fact, what is an expression of opinion, and what
is an a priori concept of value. The puerile doctrine that change

• Ibid., p. 71.

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 105

is always necessary has led many of these “scientists” to believe
that there are no longer any “inalienable rights/* no longer any
unchanging duties. They deem themselves justified, with the
support of foundation grants, to label their prejudices as truth
and to experiment with society. The Reece Committee report puts
it thus:

It seems to this Committee that there is a strong tendency
on the part of many of the social scientists whose research
is favored by the major foundations toward the concept that
there are no absolutes , that everything is indeterminate , that
no standards of conduct , morals, ethics and government
are to be deemed inviolate, that everything, including basic
moral law, is subject to change, and that it is the part of the
social scientists to take no principle for granted as a premise
in social or juridical reasoning, however fundamental it
may heretofore have been deemed to be under our Judeo -
Christian moral system .*

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER f PRODUCED BY THE SSRC

Poll taking has become one aspect of the fact-finding mania.
Professor Hobbs testified regarding The American Soldier, a book
prepared and edited under the auspices of The Social Science
Research Council. He described the process by which social
scientists, against the repeated objections of the military authori-
ties, managed to “incorporate their own ideas in a matter of
highest military significance/* This was the method of discharge

to be used by the military forces at the end of hostilities in World
War II. Most of these “scientists’* were foundation connected.
Their work was praised by Frederick Osborn, a trustee of The
Carnegie Corporation, as a “typical example of social-science pre-
diction/* What was this “example*’? These “scientists’* decided
that men should be discharged individually from the army ac-
cording to a table of weighted factors, and that these factors
should be determined by taking a poll of the men themselves. In

• Ibid., p. 7a,

106 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

other words, Tegardless of military necessities, the men were to
determine what weight should be given to length of service,
front-line duty, and other factors in determining the order of
release.

The traditional method of demobilization called for the suc-
cessive release of whole units from the armed forces, leaving
unimpaired the strength of the remaining units. The method
recommended by the social scientists, based upon alleged "scien-
tific" findings, shattered the effectiveness of individual units.

These "scientists" prevailed. As a result, there can be little
doubt that, if we had been forced into a resumption of hostilities,
our army would have been reduced to a nadir of inefficiency. As
the Committee report put it:

The military policymakers were defeated by the social scien-
tists. This was another victory in the struggle of the "social
engineers" to gain control of all the throttles of control.

* * * A few more such victories for "social engineering"
might indeed be fatal.*

In his statement filed with the Reece Committee, Mr. Charles
Dollard, President of the Carnegie Corporation, defended the
authors of The American Soldier, holding that our military
forces themselves initiated the study and, inferentially, were re-
sponsible for the outcome. Obviously enough, the study could
not have been made without express military authorization. But
it is inconceivable that any truly military minds could have
initiated the study. Nor does that seem to have happened. The
introduction to The American Soldier states that the officers
responsible for advancing the project were General George C.
Marshall and Brehon Somervell. But the actual officer in charge
was General Frederick Osborn. General Osborn was no profes-
sional soldier. He had been a civilian, an official of a factoring
company, and it is of no little consequence that he was a trustee
of the Carnegie Corporation. He had achieved some attention
in social-science circles through various writings. His service in

• Ibid,, p. 75.

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 107

the army> where he rose to the rank of major general, seems to
have been confined to the nonmilitary work of acting as director
of the Information and Education Division, the unit through
which the studies of demobilization methods were made.

Among General Osborn’s staff were Dr. Samuel A. Stouffer,
director of the professional staff, Dr. Carl I. Hovland, and Dr.
Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr., all identifiable as closely associated with
The Social Science Research Council. In all probability it was
some of these men, or some of the employed consultants, who gen-
erated the idea of the study. A two-page list of such consultants ap-
pears in the beginning of volume II of The American Soldier;
many of these, in later reviews of the book, expressed enthusiastic
praise for the work to which they had contributed.

The introduction boasts: “Never before had modern methods
of social science been employed on so large a scale by such
competent technicians.” It also said: "The conservatism natural
to professional men everywhere, and often particularly ascribed
to the professional soldier, was broken down by the imaginative
grasp of the abler leaders.-' It would be interesting to know the
full story of how these “leaders”— if military men were meant —
were sold this "grasp.” At any rate, while the book cites that even
the President approved of the project, it states: "The idea of
a point system for demobilization had been conceived in the
Research Branch * * This branch of the armed forces was
• operated not by military men but by social scientists. It is equally
clear that there was powerful and consistent opposition to the
point system from truly military men who realized how disastrous
to our security the suggested discharge system could become. This
point system contributed substantially to that grave weakness in
our forces which left us unprepared for the Korean War, coming
so soon after the close of World War II.

Looking back, it is incredible that a group of so-called "scien-
tists” could have been so blind to reality as to propose that
military decisions be made through the process of finding out
what the soldier in the ranks wanted. Moreover, the scientific
value of this effort to justify a military decision by the poll-taking

708 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

method has been questioned by many critics. Arthur M. Schles*
inger, Jr., a historian who is certainly not suspect of being a com
servative, lashed out at the study in a review, "The Statistical
Soldier." He said:

Too many obvious frauds were at last committed in the
name of sociology * * * So the old and toothless beast
was put out to pasture. In its place has come its more
carnivorous son, known in his more modest mood under
some such name as "social relations," or, more often, in
a tone of majestic simplicity, as "social science" * * #

Well, the "social science" machinery has been grinding
away for some years now. Occasionally skeptics approach the
devout and say with proper humility: You have basked in
the smile of the deans and in the favor of foundations. You
are discovering the secret of the ages. We wish to share in
the new enlightenment you are bringing us. But what, oh
wise one, should we read? Can you name a single book that
would give some idea of the great revelations that lie in
wait? The oracle at that point used to become muffled.
Then one began to hear of The American Soldier , This
work one was told was the real stuff; this would settle the
doubts.*

Schlesinger continues:

Indeed, the more basic questions are raised, not by rela-
tively innocuous practice of "social science" but by its
mystique — its pretensions to Know Knowledge and new
certitude — Most of The American Soldier is a ponderous
demonstration in NEWSPEAK of such facts as [one can]
find described more vividly and with far greater psycholog-
ical insight in a small book entitled Up Front by Bill
Mauldin. What Mauldin may have missed will turn up in
the pages of Ernie Pyle. * * * Bursting onto university
campuses after the war, overflowing with portentous if vague

• Partisan Review, August 1949,

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 109

hints of mighty wartime achievements (not, alas, to be dis-
closed because of security), fanatical in their zeal and shame-
less in their claims, they [the social scientists] persuaded
or panicked many university administrators into giving their
studies priority. Needless to say, they scored an even more
brilliant success with foundations. Certain foundation di-
rectors even decided that virtually all their funds for re-
search in the social sciences should be expended on projects
of the '‘social science” variety; the individual scholar, so
far as they were concerned, was through. * * * The whole
[is] happily subsidized by the foundations, carrying to tri-
umphant completion their ancient hope of achieving the
bureaucratization of American intellectual life.

Apart from his criticism of the underlying scientific fadism,
Schlesinger considers The American Soldier a “harmless book.”
But most of the social scientists (and perhaps General Marshall
also) considered The American Soldier a monumental contribu-
tion to military policy and to the social sciences. In the words of
Paul Lazarsfeld, one of the project’s consultants: “The results
of both volumes are without parallel in the history of the social
sciences

The American Soldier comprised two out of four volumes of
a series. The flyleaf says:

The four volumes in this series were prepared and edited
under the auspices of a Special Committee of the Social
Science Research Council comprising
Frederick Osborn, Chairman
Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr,

Leland C. De Vinney
Carl I. Hovland
John M. Russell
Samuel A. Stouffer
Donald Young, ex officio.

The data on which these volumes are based were collected
by the Research Branch, Information and Education Di-

lie SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

vision, War Department, during World War II. In making
the data available the War Department assumes no responsi-
bility for the analyses and interpretations contained in these
volumes, which are the sole responsibility of the authors.

These volumes were prepared under a grant from the
Carnegie Corporation of New York. That corporation is not
however the author, owner, publisher or proprietor of the
publication, and is not to be understood as approving by
virtue of its grant any of the statements made or views
expressed therein,

(This last reservation is typical of the method by which some
foundations seek to use the “risk capital” theory and yet escape
all responsibility for unhappy risk.) •

In Items , the official publication of The Social Science Re-
search Council, issue of March 1949, an anonymous author
boasts: “The point system was actually invented by the Research
Branch and ‘sold1 to the Army on the basis of attitude studies
made in all parts of the world.” According to the SSRC, more than
a half million soldiers were studied. These American soldiers were
guinea pigs for social scientists, to satisfy their curiosity and their
penchant for statistical analyses. Their persuasive promises of
military benefits had sold the program to the authorities. This
gave the associated professors jobs in Washington during the
war time and an opportunity to gain prestige for a mysterious
contribution to the war effort. It also almost wrecked our military
strength.

FOUNDATIONS GENERATE THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND

In the face of the evidence produced by the Reece Committee, to
deny that the major foundation complex slanted its research and
its work to the left is futile. An example is the production of The
Proper Study of Mankind , written by Stuart Chase, at the in-
stance of Donald Young, then of The Social Science Research
Council, and Charles Dollard, then of The Carnegie Corporation,
to portray the condition and functioning of the social sciences.

THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND 111

This book had enormous impact. Approximately 50,000 copies
had been sold, which, for a book of this kind, is truly monumen-
tal.

Mr. Chase was described by Professor Hobbs as a man who
"has in his work definitely indicated his leanings towards col-
lectivism and social planning * * * § * *

Mr. Chase had had a long history as a pamphleteer, In 1922
he wrote for the League for Industrial Democracy, the declared
object of which was "Education for a New Social Order Based
on Production for Use and Not for Profit.” His book A New Deal ,
published in 1932/f recommended (1) a managed currency;
(2) a drastic redistribution of the national income through in-
come and inheritance taxes; and (3) a huge program of public
works. He advocated nationwide economic controls "from the
top,” proposed a National Planning Board, and claimed that his
plan attempted "to dissolve capitalism with a minimum of gov-
ernment interference” (p, 24). His blueprint for a new America
ends with this question: "Why should Russians have all the fun
of remaking a world?”

In 1935 his book Government in Business J reprinted several
of his magazine articles extolling the New Deal. Not satisfied with
the degree of control already exercised by the Federal govern-
ment, he advocated clearing the road through a straightforward
revision of the Constitution§ and presented a long list of activities
to be assumed by the Federal government. In his later books, he
consistently pleaded for government control of and interference
with private investment. He did not depart from the Cooperative-
Socialist line until he began to write for Standard Oil of New
Jersey after World War II.

Mr. Chase was retained by The Twentieth Century Fund to
write, among other books. Goals for America, which appeared in
1942. This work advocated a "mixed economy.” In 1946 ap-

• Report, p. 85.

f Macmillan.

X Macmillan.

§ Supra, p. 287.

112 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

peared his For This We Fought ,* He had the advantage of advice
and criticism from the Twentieth Century Fund staff, but the
Fund took the precaution to say that “the opinions and conclu-
sions expressed by these books are those of Mr, Chase.” Among
his conclusions were these: He recommended a government-ma-
nipulated economy; as a new twist he asked for an “intensive
stimulation of the social sciences, to help them to begin to catch up
with the runaway physical sciences.”

The first edition of his The Proper Study of Mankind , an In-
quiry into the Study of Human Relations j* includes an introduc-
tion, “How This Book Came to Be Written.” It is quite clear,
from this introduction, that Mr. Chase was chosen by two em-
inent foundation executives, Donald Young (then president of
The Social Science Research Council and now president of The
Russell Sage Foundation) and Charles Dollard (then president of
The Carnegie Corporation of New York), to write a book for
them. The book was intended as a popular publicity piece, to in-
terpret the meaning and goals of the social sciences to the general
public. Both these gentlemen must have been familiar with Mr.
Chase's previous work and with his well-publicized political con-
victions. The conclusion is inescapable that they selected Mr.
Chase because they approved his bias, unless, indeed, one grants
them complete indifference to his convictions.

Mr. Chase had conferences with Messrs. Dollard and Young in
the course of his work, and they participated in the sending out
of a questionnaire to social scientists and exchanged ideas with
Mr. Chase. Their tax-exempt organizations assumed the financial
risk involved in the project. The book, in fact, may rightly be held
to have been a semi-official publication of The Social Science
Research Council.

The book registers many examples of economic achievement in
the social sciences. Several are of extreme interest. Mr. Chase said:

• These assignments came from Evans Clark, a former director of the Depart-
ment of Information, Bureau of the Representative in the United States of
the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (1920), later for many years
executive director of The Twentieth Century Fund,
j- Harper, 1948.

THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND 113

"There is Harry White of the Treasury arguing with Lord Keynes
as to the best form of the World Bank and the International Cur-
rency Fund — then known as the Bretton Woods Plan." * And he
lauded Lauchlin Currie as an able economist, a contributor to
the federal agencies of the New Deal, and mentions his function
on the board of economic warfare. The involvement of both Harry
Dexter White and Lauchlin Currie in Communist networks is
well known.

The second edition of Mr. Chase’s book tones down the role of
Messrs. Young and Dollard in the creation of the book, and omits
the references to Messrs. White and Currie. Mr. Chase, in ex-
pounding the concepts of foundation-supported and -directed
social-science research, lays it on the line. We are to be managed
by these experts, these social divines, with the new “scientific
method" which he says can be “applied to the behavior of men
as well as to the behavior of electrons.” “Prepare now for a sur-
prising universal," says Mr. Chase:

Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be
allowed any important part in the organization of society.
Social systems which endure are built on the average person
who can be trained to occupy any position adequately if not
brilliantly.f

And how is this “scientific” management to take place? One
gathers from Mr. Chase’s book, which seems to represent the of-
ficial line of the foundation complex, that it is to be through “cul-
tural determinism,” via a molding of our minds by propaganda.
Mr. Chase wrote:

Theoretically, a society could be completely made over in
something like 15 years, the time it takes to inculcate a
new culture into a rising group of youngsters.

Professor Hobbs in commenting on the book, saw “cultural de-
terminism” as a weapon both of fascism and communism, a va-

* P. SU.

■f Recce Committee Report , p. 87.

114 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

riety of “brainwashing” reminiscent of the Russian Pavlov's ex*
perirnents on the conditioning of dogs.*

To quote Professor Hobbs again, he has said that the “zeal-
ots*’ of the new research in the social sciences

lead people to believe that techniques exist in social science
which provide accurate description and enable prediction
of social behavior. We are told to pattern our behavior and
to change our society on the basis of such conclusions re-
garding criminality, race relations, marriage, mental health,
war, divorce, sex, and other personal and social affairs. Yet
in these areas of behavior the pertinent knowledge is
extremely limited and unreliable, the rules of behavior are
vague and changeable, the techniques are crude and un-
tested, and even the basic units required for measurement
are non-existent. [Again:] Character and integrity are dis-
solved in the acid ridicule of cultural determinism.-)*

CARNEGIE PRODUCES AN AMER/CAN DILEMMA

To the tune of $250,000, The Carnegie Corporation of New
York financed a study of the race problems in the South. Dr.
Gunnar Myrdal of Sweden was selected to run this study. He re-
ported his findings in a book which became very influential, en-
titled An American Dilemma . Dr. Myrdal was assertedly selected
because he was a foreigner and thus could be an unprejudiced ob-
server. Now, if the foundation moguls who thought a study of
the southern race situation was desirable (and I have no doubt
that it was) concluded that a foreigner should be chosen to make
it, why did they select a socialist for the job? This was no ac-
cidental selection. Dr. Myrdal’s politics were well known. Pro-
fessor Kenneth Colegrove had been Secretary-Treasurer of The
American Political Science Association for eleven years and knew
a Socialist when he saw one. He testified that Dr. Myrdal was a
“very left-wing socialist.” Jit would be incredible to suppose that

• Ibid.j pp. 86-87.

\ Ibid., p. 72.
j Ibid., p. 91.

AN AMEK/CAN DILEMMA 115

those who chose Dr. Myrdal did not realize the danger in giving
him heavy foundation subsidy to study a problem of highly deli-
cate political character.

In An American Dilemma, Dr. Myrdal libeled and insulted the
American people unmercifully. Our Constitution, he said, turned
its back on the Declaration of Independence and was “dominated
by property consciousness and designed as a defense against the
democratic spirit let loose during the Revolution,” lie referred
to our “nearly fetishistic cult of the Constitution,” continuing:
“This is unfortunate since the 150-year-old Constitution is in many
respects impractical and ill-suited for modern conditions * *
“Modern historical studies,” said the good Dr. Myrdal, “reveal
that the Constitutional Convention was nearly a plot against the
common people.”

Dr. Myrdal accused Americans of “a relatively low degree of
respect for law and order.” He referred to an “anarchistic tend*
cncy in America’s legal culture,” complicated by “a desire to reg-
ulate human behavior tyrannically by means of formal laws.” We
are a desperately low order of humanity: “We have to conceive
of all the numerous breaches of law, which an American citizen
commits or learns about in the course of ordinary living, as psy-
chologically a series of shocks which condition him and the en-
tire society to a low degree of law observance.” He talks about
the possibility that, “in the course of time, Americans” might con-
ceivably be “brought to be a law-abiding people.” *

Professor Colegrove had this to say about An American X)i-
lemmaf :

Dr. Myrdal was a Socialist, pretty far left, indeed ex-
tremely left. He was not unprejudiced. He came over
here with all the prejudices of European Socialists. And the
criticism that he makes of the American Constitution, the
criticism that he makes of the conservatives of the United
States, are bitter criticisms. He didn’t have any praise at

• Ibid., p. 89 et seq.
t Report, p. 91.

116 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

all for the conservatives. He did praise what he called the
liberals. And he implied that it was the conservatives in the
United States who created the problem and who continued
the difficulties of any solution. I felt the foundations did a
great disservice to American scholarship in announcing his
study as an objective nonpartisan study whose conclusions
were wholly unbiased. It was almost intellectual dishonesty.*

There is this strange aftermath to An American Dilemma ,
which illustrates the dangers when foundations finance studies in
the social sciences without making certain that the product is to be
objective. In a recent instance, the Supreme Court of the United
States based one of its most important decisionsin part upon the
authority of this book. This was in the segregation cases (Broiun
v . Board of Education , 347 U.S. 483 and 349 U.S. 293). This
feature of its decisions was aptly ridiculed in an article which ap-
peared in the American Bar Association Journal of April i956>
written by Eugene Cook, the Attorney General of Georgia, and
William I. Potter, of the Kansas City Bar. These writers expressed
astonishment that the Court had “cited as authority college pro-
fessors, psychologists, and sociologists/' rightly asking:

Should our fundamental rights rise, fall or change along
with the latest fashions of psychological literature?

They continued:

The book, An American Dilemma, written by Swedish so-
cialist Gunnar Myrdal on a grant from the Carnegie Foun-
dation, was cited in its entirety by the Supreme Court
as an authority for its ruling.

It was in this book that Myrdal declared the United States
Constitution to be “impractical and unsuited to modem
conditions” and its adoption to be “nearly a plot against the
common people.” Furthermore, he openly avowed that

• Ibid., p. 91.

AN AMERICAN DILEMMA 117

liberty must be foresaken for the benefit of what he called
“social equality.”

Has the present Supreme Court now adopted Myrdal's
view of the Constitution? .

In an article, “The Supreme Court Must Be Curbed/’ appear-
ing in the May x 8, 1956, issue of U. S. News & World Report ,
the former Justice of the Supreme Court, James F. Byrnes, cried
out against the Court having supported its decision “not by
legal precedents but. by the writings of sociologists.” He noted its
citation of the Myrdal book and said that “the files of the House
Committee on Un-American Activities show that many of Myrdal’s
associates are members of organizations cited as subversive by
the Depar tment of Justice under Democratic and Republican Ad-
ministrations/’

It is not my purpose here to discuss whether the Supreme
Court’s decision in the Broiun case was right or wrong, but
merely to point out that scientism ■, financed by great foundations,
can find unexpected and startling places to roost,

Charles Dollard of The Carnegie Foundation, in his statement
filed with the Reece Committee, defended the selection of Dr,
Myrdal for the race study, partly by attempting to show that the
Swedish scholar was not a Socialist in the sense we use the term,
He said it was “common knowledge, that the program inaugu-
rated in Sweden by the Social Democrats is vastly different from
what we in this country normally think of as socialism.” This
comment begged the question. Whatever program may have been
“inaugurated” in Sweden by her Socialists, their objectives were
those we rightly attribute to socialism. It is the objectives which
count; these alone should count in appraising the bias of an au-
thor who is being considered for research in a delicate and po-
litical field of social science.

There can be no doubt that the program of the Swedish Social
Demokratiska Partie is anticapitalist. It preaches class struggle,

118 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

expropriation of the means of production, a new regulation of in-
come and property distribution. The by-laws of this party declare
as its purpose: “in cooperation with the socialist parties of other
countries to recreate the economic order of bourgeois society and
to achieve liberation of the exploited classes.” Raymond Fusilier,
in his Le Parti Socialiste Suedois (1954), reports that the party ad-
vocates nationalization of oil, banking, and insurance.

Messrs. Young and Dollard are highly intelligent, exceptionally
well-informed men. There were plenty of unbiased and objective
European scholars to choose from. Both Young and Dollard knew
that the race problem was, indeed, one of great political delicacy.
That they would not have cared what the political bias of a
scholar selected for such an investigation might be, would at-
tribute to them negligence foreign to their characters. The conclu-
sion seems fair that Dr. Myrdal was cho:en not in spite of his col-
lectivist bias but because of it.

In one of his books, Warning Against Peace Optimism (1944)*
Dr. Myrdal admits to an initial excitement and enthusiasm over
the Russian Revolution, stating, however, that he was later re-
pelled by the general absence of individual liberties in Russia.
But he has never given up hope apparently, that Russia would
come through to lead the world. After a three-week trip through
Russia in 1941, he announced that he had become excited over
the warm, human attitudes in the Soviet Union. He said that Rus-
sia is still a puzzle to him, but that he wants to believe in Russia,
not only in her future might but in the force of her “internation-
alist, democratic ideals.”

On another occasion (in Kontakt mit Amerika, 1943), this
“scientific” observer, selected by leaders in the social-science sec-
tion of the foundation world to study our race problem, offered
this opinion: “The ideals of Soviet socialism, even if up to now
not its practice, are democratic. Russia even has the most demo-
cratic constitution in the world.” He demonstrates his deep un-
derstanding of the international situation by adding: “America
must free the Russians from fear and permit Russia to develop her
democratic ideals.1 1

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 119 .

Far from contributing to a solution of the American race prob-
lem, An American Dilemma, sponsored by tax-exempt founda-
tions, supplied ammunition for use by Communist, neutralist, and
other agitators to undermine America's position in a world pop-
ulated by colored majorities. Myrdal said: “The treatment of the
Negro is America’s greatest scandal.” This is not the language of
science, but clearly the formulation of a political agitator. He said
that the Negro's situation in the U. S. A. is “salt in the wounds
of colored people all over the world, whose rising influence is
axiomatic.’'

No sensible person doubts that the race problem in the United
States is a difficult and vital one, crying for sound and fair solu-
tion. But it is clear that the assignment given to Dr. Myrdal by
Carnegie Foundation and Social Science Research Council exec-
utives involved incendiary matter which, it might readily be
expected, a leader of international socialism would delight in ex-
ploiting. This must have been foreseen by Dr. Myrdal’s sponsors.

One more note on Dr. Myrdal. According to Fusilier, Myrdal's
radicalism in domestic affairs antagonized a great part of the so-
cial democratic constituency in Sweden. This resentment against
him may have led to his change of environment. He has become
an important official of the United Nations, as Secretary of the
U, N. Council for Europe. Here he works for economic integra-
tion between East and West, opposes American influence in Eu-
rope, accuses American industry of exploiting European custom-
ers, and generally plays an active anti-American political role.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

The examples of scientism which I have given so far, slanting
sharply to the left, are not isolated cases — “sports” of major founda-
tion investment. One or two, or three or four, or even more, could
be excused as accidents. But I am reminded of what Dr. Fred-
erick P. Keppel once said to a student at Columbia when he was
Dean of the College. He had informed the student that he was
expelling him for excessive cuts.

120 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

The young man replied: “But, Dean, I have had an excuse,
every time/*

“Yes," answered the Dean, “but you have had too many ex*
cuses.”

Dean Keppei himself later became president of The Carnegie
Corporation.

The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences is the basic reference
book in the “social sciences/1 Though it was even then somewhat
out of date, it was estimated that, in 1952, it was consulted about
half a million times. It is a book of tremendous importance and in-
fluence. The creation of the Encyclopedia was financed or ma-
terially supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, The Carnegie
Corporation, and The Russell Sage Foundation. It was a highly
desirable venture. Objectively prepared, it could have taken a
proud and meritorious place in our library of basic reference
books. The objectivity which was essential to its propriety as a
foundation-supported project, however, was markedly missing in
the product which was turned out.

I do not suggest that the foundations which financed the project
should have censored it or in any way controlled its production,
I do suggest that they should have made sure that those who
would edit and create it would have the necessary objectivity.
This they failed to do.

The key man in editing the Encyclopedia , apparently, was Dr.
Alvin Johnson, an associate editor. Dr. Johnson was a teacher of
economics, who had been the editor of the New Republic, a co-
founder of the New School for Social Research, and an experi-
enced rewrite man and editor of several other encyclopedic pub-
lications. He had been employed by The Carnegie Corporation in
its public-library program and by The Carnegie Endowment to
write a piece, before World War I, on the interest of the labor
organizations in peace. He had a flair for catering to the guilt
feelings of the rich and to the reform ideas of the foundation
bureaucracy.

His patron at Columbia University, Professor Seeligman, a
wealthy supporter of the social sciences, became the nominal head

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 121

of The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences . He lined up a glit-
tering advisory board and the support of foundations and of a
number of professional societies which were then not yet tainted
by the ascendancy of a ruling, socialist clique. The Encyclopedia
enterprise served to create a spirit of common work and common
goals among these professional societies. Alvin Johnson, a man
of wit and shrewd tenacity, became the guiding spirit of the
venture. There is tittle doubt that his association with the enter-
prise contributed to enabling the propagandists of the left to
influence the minds of successive generations of opinion molders
in public affairs.

In his autobiography, Dr. Johnson boasts:

In enlisting assistant editors I forebore all inquiry about
infection with Marx. Like the common cold, Marx was in
the air, sometimes cutting editorial efficiency but not ir-
remediably. Although I have always regarded myself as a
self-effacing scholar, I meant to keep the encyclopedia un-
der my hand. * * * I had two assistant editors who as-
serted that they were Socialists. That was nothing to me;
they were good and faithful workers. And one was so con-
siderate of my reactionary bent as to inform me that a new
editor I had taken on was a Communist. I sent for him.
“Yes” he said “I was once a Communist. The name by
which I go is not my real name.” He gave me his real
name, which had figured in press accounts of rows in the
Communist party. “And so” he said “you are going to fire
me.” “Certainly not. You are here to do a specific editorial
job. Your private political views are your own business. You
can’t import them into any work you do for me. But you
exhibit the frankness of a gentleman and a scholar. All I
ask of you is that if ever you feel it your moral duty to
slap a little Communist color on your work, you will re-
sign.” That he promised, and he kept his promise.*

• Pioneers Program, Viking Press, 195a, p. 311.

122 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

Dr. Johnson did not make similar reservations regarding So-
cialist bias. I quote at length from his book because the attitude
of this recipient-dispenser of foundation money is so characteristic
of the past attitudes of foundation executives. It has been as if,
come the revolution, they wished to be sure of a certificate of good
conduct from Communist scholars. They treated them with kid
gloves, overlooking the primacy of their party allegiance. Dr.
Johnson may not today be a Socialist himself, but while he was
working on the Encyclopedia, his attitude toward ex-Communist
and Socialist gentlemen did much to influence American teachers
(and opinion leaders influenced by social-science teachers) with
socialist ideas.

Dr. Johnson’s incomprehensible attitude, that the political bias
of an editor of an encyclopedia of the social sciences was of no
moment, played its part in the unfortunate result. The Encyclo-
pedia contains a large number of articles written by Communists,
fellow travelers and Socialist partisans generally. The Reece
Committee report gave a partial list of such articles, as follows*:

The article on The Rise of Liberalism was written by
Harold J. Laski, a British socialist. He also did the articles
on Bureaucracy, Democracy , Judiciary: Liberty: Social Con-
tract: and Ulyanov, Vladimir Ilich [Lenin].

Atheism , Modern Atheism was written by Oscar Jassi,
a socialist of Hungarian origin. Bolshevism was written by
Maurice Dobb, an English radical. Capitalism, by Werner
Sombart, a socialist who became affiliated with the Nazis.

Communism was written by Max Beer, a Marxian of the
University of Frankfurt, Germany. Communist Parties was
written by Lewis L. Lorwin, whose views may be gleaned
from this statement in the article: “The view common in the
United States that the Communists are either cranks or
criminals is largely a reflection of a conservative outlook.”
He also wrote the article on Exploitation .

Corporation, written by two New Dealers, Adolph A.

• pp. 92-93.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 123

Berle, Jr., and Gardiner C. Means, clearly reveals their bias
at that time. (Mr. Berle has since written The 20th Cen-
tury Capitalist Revolution and repudiated some of his
former views regarding corporations.) They say that the cor-
poration may well equal or exceed the state in power: “The
law of corporations, accordingly, might well be considered
as a potential constitutional law for the new economic state:
while business practice assumes many of the aspects of ad-
ministrative government.”

Criticism, Social , was produced by Robert Morss Lovett,
of wide Communist front associations. Education, History,
was produced by George S. Counts, a radical educa-
tor * * * Fabianism was written by G. D. H. Cole, a
British socialist. He also wrote the article on Industrial-
ism. Fortunes, Private, Modern Period, prepared by Lewis
Corey, is easily recognizable as a Marxist analysis.

Freedom of Speech and of the Press was written by Robert
Eislcr of Paris, who destroys the Christian ethic with this au-
thoritative pronouncement: “No one today will consider the
particular ethical doctrine of modern, or for that matter of
ancient, Christianity as self-evident or natural or as the
morality common to all men. The modern relativist theory
of values has definitely shattered the basis on which such ar-
tificial churches as the various ethical societies orders rested.”

Government, Soviet Russia was prepared by Otta Hoetzsch
of the University of Berlin who gives us kind thoughts about
the Soviets- — for example: “Although the elections are sub-
ject to pressure of Communist dictatorship, this workers '
democracy is not entirely a fiction/' [Emphasis ours.]

The article on Labor-Capital Co-Operation is credited
to J. B. S. Hardman, whose Communist front affiliations are
recorded in Appendix, Part IX of the Dies Committee
Reports, 78th Congress (1944). He also wrote Labor Par-
ties, General, United States, Masses and Terrorism . Laissez-
Faire is the product of the socialist, G. D. H. Cole; his job
was done with a hatchet. Large Scale Production , by My-

124 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

ron W. Watkins, is an attack on the production methods of
Big Business.

Morals is the product of Horace M. Kallen, whose ex-
tensive Communist-front associations are a matter of record.
Philosophy was produced by Horace B. Davis, with ex-
Communist-front associations (See Appendix IX). Political
Offenders, by Max Lerner, a radical, contains a diatribe
against the treatment of political offenders. Political Police
is by Roger N. Baldwin, recorded by Appendix IX as
having Communist-front associations. Poiver, Industrial, by
Hugh Quigley, seems to be a plea for more control of
business. Proletariat is by Alfred Meusel of Germany and
seems to admire the Soviet system in Russia,

Social Work, General Discussion, Social Case Work, is
the work of a Communist-fronter, Philip Klein. Socialism was
written by a socialist, Oscar Janski,* It is not unsympathetic
to Communism.

Stabilization, Economic, was written by George Soule,
of extensive Communist-front affiliations. It expresses doubt
that “stabilization” can be accomplished under our present
order. Strikes and Lockouts is by John A. Fitch, of wide
Communist-front affiliations. Vested Interests is the work
of Max Lerner.

One of the theses in Woman, Position in Society, by the
Communist-fronter, Bernhard J. Stern, is that we are not
doing right by our women, while the Soviets are,

This list is not inclusive. Many more instances of radical selec-
tion could be given, plus the multitude of articles by moderately
slanted writers.

The Committee report commented further}*:

i

What is amazingly characteristic of the Encyclopedia is
the extent to which articles on “left” subjects have been

•This name was misspelled in the Committee Report. It should be Oskar
Jaszy. (See also page m).

t P- 93-

THE SWING TO THE LEFT 125

assigned to leftists; in the case of the subjects to the "right/’
leftists again have been selected to describe and expound
them. This is reminiscent of the reviews in the New York
Times of books on China, in which both pro-and-con-
Comrnunist volumes were assigned to pro-Communists for
review.

Dr. Johnson has been very adroit in giving the appearance of
objectivity at the same time that he has promoted his own brand
of social criticism and reform. While Dr. Johnson was associated
with the New School for Social Research in New York City, the
well-known Mexican Communist painter Orozco was selected to
paint murals on the walls of a large hall in the school building.
The final paintings, sketches of which must have been submitted
in advance, prominently present Lenin, Stalin, and marching
Soviet soldiers. Dr. Johnson defended these murals on the theory
that they were not intended as propaganda but were symbols of
the time. He did not explain why pictures of equally detestable
characters, also characteristic of the time, such as Hitler and Mus-
solini, were not depicted. Surely, if the idea was to present Lenin
and Stalin as examples of the horrors of the time, Hitler and Mus-
solini would have been at least as eminent examples. If the idea
was merely to depict the revolutionary movements of the era, then,
after all, the movements of Hitler and Mussolini were revolution-
ary also, It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Hitler and
Mussolini were omitted because they were examples of horror
and Lenin and Stalin were depicted because they were deemed
not to be,

THE SWING TO THE LEFT

The foundation-fostered approach to research in the social sci-
ences, with its "social goals" to which Dr. Carl O. Sauer (profes-
sor of geography at the University of California,) referred, in
addressing The Social Science Research Council, tends strongly
to the left politically. Professor Hobbs so testified and gave many
examples. The Committee accumulated a mass of supporting ma-

726 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

terial. Even the Cox Committee had before it indications that this
contention of leftward direction is correct. A long and brilliant
statement was attached to the Hearings of the Cox Committee*
but was apparently ignored in its conclusions. It was prepared by
Mark M. Jones, a consulting economist who had been an adviser
to private philanthropy for over thirty years. Mr. Jones wrote:

From the standpoint of. the objects supported by founda-
tions, it seems clear that projects classified in the field of
• the social sciences have been most subject to doubt with
respect to the public interest. This is largely because most
of such projects have been executed by educational and
charitable agencies. Many educational agencies appear to
have been so intolerant even of the idea of profits that they
naturally inclined toward means and measures not for
profit. This inclination, of course, led many into collectivist
channels of thought and action, probably without realization
of (what was happening. When the sophistries of John
Maynard Keynes came along, they fell on receptive ground
and were quickly made fashionable largely because of this
attitude. We now have so-called social sciences under the
aegis of education which are collectivist in character more
than anything else . They represent too much socialism and
not enough science. [Emphasis supplied.]

Mr. Jones also said: .

From the standpoint of the place of the foundation, the most
important question falls in the category of omissions. I have
not heard of grants from foundations or of activities car-
ried on directly by them which have been particularly note-
worthy from the standpoint of the improvement of the
capitalistic system. * * * Foundations owe their existence
to the capitalistic system.

# Cox Committee Hearings, p. 767 el seq.

THE SWING TO THE LEFT 127

Professor Rowe, in his Reece Committee testimony, contrib-
uted these comments concerning the leftward slant of so much
foundation-supported social-science research:

I think that the development of the social sciences in this
country in the last 40 or 50 years has been very heavily in-
fluenced, in my opinion, by ideas imported from abroad,
which have been connected with, if not originated in,
socialistic mentality, and to say this is to simply say that it
is normal in social science to accept today a great deal of
economic determinism, to accept a great deal of emphasis
upon empirical research over and against basic thinking and
the advancement of theory, and to accept a lot of ideas
about the position of the social scientist in the society that
seem to me rather alien to the American tradition.

I think it must be kept in mind that the theory of social
engineering is closely related to the notion of the elite
which we find dominant in Marxism , the notion that a few
people are those who hold the tradition and who have
the expertness and that these people can engineer the
people as a whole into a better way of living, whether they
like it or ivant it or not . It is their duty to lead them /ore-
ibly so to speak in this direction ,

That is all tied up with the conviction of the Marxists that
they seem to have, rather that they do have, a perfect social
science. This is one of the main tenets of Marxism, that they
have a social science which is perfect; it not only explains
all the past history, but it will lead to the complete victory
of the socialist state on a worldwide basis.

' •

I am not maintaining that my colleagues are all dyed in the
wool along this line, but there is such a thing as infection.
I think some of these ideas have infected us, and have gotten
over into a much more influential place in our thinking
than many of us understand or realize. The complete re-
spectability of some of the basic ideas I have been talking

128 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

about in the framework of American intellectual life can
be seen when you ask yourself the question, “When I was
in college, what was I taught about the economic interpreta-
tion of history, the frontier interpretation of American
history, the economic basis of the American Constitution,
and things of this kind?”

This is the entering wedge for the economic analysis of
social problems which is related to economic determinism,
which is the very heart and soul of the Marxist ideology.
When we reflect on the extent to which these ideas have
become accepted in the American intellectual community,
I think we ought to be a bit alarmed, and be a bit hesitant
about the direction in which we are going.

For my own purposes, I would much rather complicate the
analysis of social phenomena by insisting that at all times
there are at least three different kinds of components that
have to be taken into account. There is not only the basic
economic thing. We all recognize its importance. But there
are what I call political factors. These have to do with the
fundamental presuppositions people have about the values
that they consider important and desirable. These can be
just as well related to abstract and to absolute truth, which
we are all trying to search for in our own way, as they can
be to economic formation and predetermination, if I make
myself clear. Along with this you have to take into account
the power element in the military field. If you throw all
these things in together, I think it rather tends to scramble
the analysis and reduce it from its stark simplicity, as it is
embodied in the doctrines of communism, into something
which is much harder to handle and much more difficult
and complicated, but is a good deal closer to the truth.
I make this rather long statement only because the subject
is extremely complicated. I know I can't discuss it ade-
quately here, and I don’t pretend to try, but I am trying to
introduce a few of the things which give me the feeling
that in our academic community as a whole we have gone

MUCKRAKING INFLUENCE OF SOME FOUNDATIONS 129

down the road in the direction of the dominance of an in-
tellectual £lite. We have gone down the road in the direction
of economic determination of everything, throwing abstract
values out of the window.*

THE MUCKRAKING INFLUENCE OF SOME FOUNDATIONS

Professor Kenneth Colegrove joined those scholars who asserted
that foundation-supported social-science research had overempha-
sized the empirical method and that this resulted in leftist mate-
rialism, a decline of morality, and a declining respect for American
traditions. He attributed this in part to an overinterest in things
‘‘pathological”: .

* * * I think there has been unfortunately a tendency on
the part of the foundations to promote research that is
pathological in that respect, that is pointing out the bad
aspects of American government, American politics, Amer-
ican society, and so on, instead of emphasizing the good
aspects.f

And he said that such research had been used as a "cloak for
reform”:

If you are going to study the pathological aspects, the
natural tendency of human nature * * * is to find out how
to cure it, how to alleviate it, and so on. And if the foun-
dations contribute overmuch to pathological studies, and not
sufficiently to the studies with reference to the soundness
of our institutions, there would be more conclusions on the
pathological side than there would be conclusions on the
sounder traditional side of American government, American
history, and so on. That would inevitably follow.” $

This insistence, fostered by the foundations, on finding things
at fault with America, has run through the entire foundation com-

# Reece Committee Report , pp, 123-124,
t Ibid., p. 116.

X Ibid., p. i i*j.

130 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

plex or concentration of power and has been greatly responsible,
in Professor Colegrove’s judgment, for the distinct turn '‘to the
left." He attributed to this the growing tendency in the American
classroom to think "that intellectualism and liberalism or radi-
calism were synonymous" and that a conservative "was not an
intellectual."

Out of this "overemphasis on the constant need for reform"
grew the concept of "social engineering," according to Professor
Colegrove. And he offered these astute comments:

Dr. Colegrove. That, of course, grows out of the over-
emphasis on the constant need for reform. The assumption
is that everything needs reform, that unless you are reform-
ing you are not progressing. I think it is in large part due to
the failure of the foundations, the failure of many of the
scholars they choose, to fully understand what the principles
of the American Constitution are, what the principles of
American tradition are. Some of them, I know, do not ac-
cept those principles as sound. They even attack the princi-
ples. Of course, we all know that the principles should be
examined and re-examined. But there is a tendency on
the part of those who get grants from the foundations to
think that they must turn out something in the way of
reform; not a study which does not suggest a definite re-
form but a study more like Myrdal’s study, The American
Dilemma , which poses a condition in which there must be
reform.

Mr. Wormser, Does that tendency to insist on reform
in turn tend to attract the more radical type of scholar,, with
the result that grants are made more generally to those
considerably to the left?

Dr. Colegrove. I think undoubtedly it does, especially
in the cooperative research, where a large number of people
cooperate or operate together on one research project.

MASS RESEARCH-INTEGRATION AND CONFORMITY 131

Mr. Wormser. Professor, back to this term, “social en-
gineering,M again, is there not a certain presumption or
presumptuousness, on the part of social scientists, to con-
sider themselves a group of the £lite who are solely capable
and should be given the sole opportunity to guide us in our
social development? They exclude by inference, I suppose,
religious leaders and what you might call humanistic lead-
ers. They combine the tendency toward the self-generated
social engineering concept with a high concentration of
power in that interlocking arrangement of foundations and
agencies, and it seems to me you might have something
rather dangerous.

Dr. Colegrove, I think so. Very decisively. There is a
sort of arrogance in a large number of people, and the ar-
rogance of scholarship is in many cases a very irritating af-
fair. But there is a tendency of scholars to become arrogant,
to be contemptuous of other people’s opinions.*

MASS RESEARCH-INTEGRATION AND CONFORMITY

Two long articles on foundations by William H. Whyte, Jr., ap-
peared in Fortune (October and November 1955) before the
publication of his book, The Organization Man. One has only to
read the first of these articles to understand that he is no friend of
the Reece Committee and that he is a strong admirer of the major
foundations. Yet his second article, entitled “Where the Founda-
tions Fall Down/’ is devoted almost entirely to a criticism of the
tendency of the great foundations to indulge in mass research.
The following quotations are from this latter article:

In making grants, they channel the bulk of their money
to large-scale team projects and programs, only a small part
to the individual. This trend, furthermore, is self-perpetu-
ating. Academics joke privately (and bitterly) that it’s
easier to get $500,000 from a foundation than $5,000; un-

• Ibid., p. 125.

L

132 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

derstandably, many react by inflating their projects, and
the more they do so, the more satisfied the foundations are
that their way of giving is the proper way.

* * *

Here is the way they apportion the funds * * * 76 per
cent of the total — goes to big team projects or institutions.

t # *

The majority of social scientists believe that the founda-
tions wish to support (a) large projects, (b) mapped in
great detail, (c) tailored to foundation interests.

# * # •

Overblown projects usually turn out badly, but failure
doesn’t get advertised. Researchers are reluctant to tell the
foundation they have been wasting its money; and even if
nothing comes out of the project there is always the con-
solation that the younger people got some good training.
Occasionally researchers do confess failure but this is likely
to be a disingenuous preface to asking for more money to
reach the summit now in sight

While foundation officials may know that nothing very
important came of an overblown project, they demonstrate
no sense of a far more negative effect, i.e., the waste of the
scholar’s time and energies in what ought to be his most
productive years. This is the true blight and it affects the
big men in the research field quite as much as the new*
comer.

• # •

Even when they want to do some small, independent re-
search of their own, top men often have great trouble get-
ting money for it.

# # #

There is, too, the “lone wolf,” the man who insists on
pursuing his own, independent course. By and large, foun-
dations dismiss him as no problem.

MASS RESEARCH-INTEGRATION AND CONFORMITY 133

These are serious indictments of the “projectitis” which has be-
set the great foundations, wasteful of precious talent, tending to
create conformity and uniformity, repressing individual initiative,
destructive of that intellectual independence which is the most
valuable possession of the academician.

Mr. Dwight Macdonald, in his book The Ford Foundation was
perhaps even stronger in his condemnation of the foundations for
their emphasis on mass research. He said:

An inevitable, and depressing, question is: What is the
practical effect of the towering mass of research that Ford
and the other foundations have erected with their millions?
Does anybody read their findings — can anybody read them?

# # #

But while the work of a single scholar may sometimes
achieve the intellectual, and even aesthetic, interest that
a literary or philosophical production has, and so have a

legitimate claim to be judged as an end in itself, rather than
as merely a means toward some other end, this almost
never happens with the products of modern collective re-
search.*

Mr. Macdonald quoted Abraham Flexner as saying in his
Funds and Foundations: “Who reads these books?”; Einstein as
saying: “I am a horse for a single harness, not cut out for tandem
or team-work; for well I know that in order to attain any definite
goal, it is imperative that one person should do the thinking and
commanding.”; and Elbridge Sibley, studying the lone-wolf re-
searcher’s needs for The Social Science Research Foundation, as
saying; “No effective substitute has been or is likely to be found
for the individual human mind as an instrument for making fun-
damental new discoveries.”

Professor Rowe, in testifying previously before the McCarran
Committee, was asked whether he knew of any efforts by founda-

• P. 106,

134 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

tions to “integrate studies and to bring about unanimity of agree-
ment on any particular subject.” This led to the following testi-
mony:

From my point of view, the foundations and these re-
search organizations like the Institute of Pacific Relations
have gone hog xvild on the coordination of research . They
have committed themselves so thoroughly to coordination
of research that in fact instead of supporting a great variety
of research projects, which would enrich the American in-
tellectual scene through variegation, tohich is a value I very
basically believe in, you have a narrowing of emphasis, a con -
centration of power, a concentration of authority, and an
impoverishment of the American intellectual scene .

# * *

Now, as I said, I am off on a hobbyhorse at this point. But
it is of particular interest, because by exercising power
over research in this way, you see, by insisting on the in-
tegration of research activity, anybody who wants to, can
control the results of research in American universities .
And I think this is a very questionable business that the
public ought to look at very, very closely, and see whether
they want a few monopolies of the money, like, for instance,
the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corp., who have
done immense amounts of good , to emphasize narrow con-
centration to the extent that they have ,

# t #

I often say that if we try to become as efficient as the really
efficient, supposedly, people, the dictators, then we destroy
American scholarship and everything that it stands for.
And I often wonder whether my colleagues realize who won
the last war. Intellectually speaking, this countiy has a
great danger of intellectually tiying to imitate the totalitar-

MASS RESEARCH— INTEGRATION AND CONFORMITY 135

ian approach, in allowing people at centers of financial
power — they aren't political powers in this sense — to tell the
public what to study and what to work on, and to set up a
framework .

Now, of course, as you know, scholars like freedom. Maybe
they come up with a lot of useless information. But in
my value standard, as soon as we diminish the free exercise
of unhampered curiosity, free curiosity, by channeling our
efforts along this line, we then destroy the American men-
tality. Because the great feature of the American mentality
is the belief in allowing people to rush off in all kinds of
different directions at once. Because we don’t know what is
absolutely right. You can't tell that far in advance*

* # #

If I may just continue one moment more, Senator, I would
like to point out to you that Adolf Hitler very effectively
crippled atomic research in Germany by telling the physicists
what he wanted them to come up with. Now, this is true.
And if you can do that in atomic physics, you can do it
10 times as fast in the so-called social sciences which really
aren’t sciences at all, where really opinion, differentiation
of opinion, is the thing that matters and what we stand for
in this country.

That is why I become very much inflamed when I even
Smell the first hint of a combination in restraint of trade in
the intellectual sphere .

Now, you see what I am talking about with this interlock-
ing directorate? That is what bothers me about it. I don't
mind if the boys go off and have a club of their own, That is
their own business . But when you get a tie-in of money,
a tie-in of the promotion of monographs, a tie-in of research,
and a tie-in of publication, then I say that the intellectuals
are having the reins put on them and blinders .

Senator Watkins. Otherwise, they do not get on the
team.

136 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

Mr. Rowe. That is right. They don't get on the team, and
they don't get a chance to carry the ball.

Now to the faculty member, this means money, income,
what he lives on. It is vital. It is not just some recrea-
tional thing, you see,

# # #

And, of course, remember this. The foundation people have
to have jobs . They have to have something to administer .
They don't want to give aicay the money to the universities
and say “Go ahead and spend it any way you want ” They
want to see that the activity pays . That is, we have got to
have a regular flow of the so-called materials of research
coming out. We want to see this flow in certain quantity.
It has to have a certain weight in the hand . And to see that
this happens, we do not just give it to a university where
they are going to allow any Tom, Dick and Harry of a
professor to do his own thinking. “No, we want an integra -
tion."

* # *

Senator Watkins. I take it that is a pretty good plea for
the university as against the foundation.

Mr. Rowe. Absolutely. And, as a matter of fact, 1 couldn't
find a better illustration of the dangers of consistently
over the years donating very large sums of money to organ-
izations, you see, for research purposes, than is involved in
the very Institute of Pacific Relations itself . It is a fine il-
lustration of the fact that power corrupts, and the more
power you get the more corrupt you get.*

In testifying before the Reece Committee, Professor Rowe re-
peated his deep concern over the tendency of the great founda-
tions to create guided research projects instead of supporting the
individual researcher in whatever direction he wished to go. His
best illustration was that of the study, financed by The Rocke-

• Reece Committee Report , p. 41 el seq. Emphasis supplied.

MASS RESEARCH-INTEGRATION AND CONFORMITY 137

feller Foundation, to the extent of some $200,000, of the Taiping
Rebellion, which occurred in China in the 19th century. This
project concentrated the efforts of a considerable group of compe-
tent researchers on a subject which had very limited value. Pro-
fessor Rowe testified:

I thought that in view of the scarcity of human resources
and the need for general training on Far Eastern matters,
that this was focusing it down pretty fine. It is a wonderful
project from the point of view of research. If you believe
in gadgetry, this had all the gadgets you will ever want to
find. If you believe that the best way to promote research
is to pick out highly trained and able people and set them
free in a general field, like Chinese studies, to follow their
own interests wherever they may lead them, then you see
this is the very opposite of that kind of thing. It does achieve
a certain kind of mechanical efficiency, it seems to me, at
the expense of inhibiting the kind of thing that Mr. Hays
was talking about, namely, the freedom of the individual
to go down any number of blind alleys he wants to go down
in the free pursuit of his curiosity, in the interests of
honestly trying to come up with important things.*
Professor Rowe illustrated another aspect of the tendency by
foundations to organize research according to predetermined
plans. He cited the attempt by The Carnegie Corporation to in-
duce Yale University "to eliminate the work we were doing in the
far-eastern field and to concentrate our work on the southeast
Asian field." His testimony proceeded:

The only reason for my giving you this incident in some-
what detail is to indicate what I consider to be a real
tendency in foundations today — in some foundations, not all

• Ibid., p. 80. In his teslimony before the McCarran Committee, Professor
Rowe, referring to the Taiping project, had said: “This kind of thing is
supported by foundation money. And, of course, the temptation is to bring
everybody in and integrate, through a genteel process of bribery. That is to
say, you support the student, you give him a fellowship, if he will buy your
subject matter area.”

138 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

— to adopt a function of trying to rationalize higher educa-
tion and research in this country along the lines of the great-
est so-called efficiency. I used the word “so-called” there de-
signedly, because in my view, the notion that educational and
research and scholarly efficiency can be produced this way in
a democratic society is unacceptable. It seems to me that in
a democratic society we have to strive for the greatest pos-
sible variegation and differentiation as between universities
along these lines, and the suggestion that any one university
should more or less monopolize one field or any few universi-
ties monopolize one field, and give the other fields to others
to do likewise with, it is personally repugnant to me. It does
not jibe with my notion of academic freedom in the kind of
democratic society that I believe in.*

As Professor Rowe put it: “What * * * is a professor to think
when people with money come along and tell his university that
what he is doing there is useless and ought to be liquidated, be-
cause it is being done much better some place else?”

* Ibid,/ p. 35*

5

FOUNDATIONS AND
RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

THE CONTROL OF EDUCATION BY FOUNDATIONS

A very powerful complex of foundations and allied organiza-
tions has developed over the years to exercise a high degree of
control over education. Part of this complex, and ultimately re-
sponsible for it, are the Rockefeller and Carnegie groups of foun-
dations. The largest of the foundation giants, The Ford Founda-
tion, is a late comer. It has now joined in the complex and its im-
pact is tremendous; but the operations of the Carnegie and Rocke-
feller groups start way back.

There is little question that the initial efforts of the Car-
negie and Rockefeller foundations in the field of education pro-
duced substantial and salutary results. Certainly the standards of
our institutions of higher learning were materially improved as
a result of the early work of these foundations. Yet the Reece
Committee questioned whether their actions were wholly com-
mendable. The reason for this doubt was that coercive methods
were used.

Dr. Ernest Victor Hollis, now Chief of College Administration
in the United States Office of Education, once explained the back-
ground of this coercive approach as follows:

* * * Unfavorable public estimate of the elder Rocke-
feller and Andrew Carnegie, made it inexpedient in 1905

139

140 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

for their newly created philanthropic foundations to at-
tempt any direct reforms in higher education.*

The method used, therefore, he said, was one of indirection —
“indirectly through general and non-controversial purposes.” “For
instance,” said Dr. Hollis, “there is little connection between giv-
ing a pension to a college professor or giving a sum to the general
endowment of his college, and reforming entrance requirements,
the financial practices, and the scholastic standards of his institu-
tion,” Yet one was tied to the other. It was a case of conform, or no
grantl When to conform meant bathing in a stream of millions,
college and university administrators and their faculties were in-
clined to conform.

About this type of coercion the Committee report said:

We question, however, whether foundations should have
the power even to do good in the coercive manner which
was employed. We cannot repeat too often that power jn
itself is dangerous. What may have been used for a benign
purpose could in the future be used for the promotion of
purposes against the interests of the people. It does not
write off this danger to say that good men ran the founda-
tions. It is power which is dangerous — power uncontrolled
by public responsibility, f

Merely to recognize the satisfactory results of benign coercion,
to point to the highly desirable academic reforms for which this
coercion was responsible, is not enough. Such a mistake was
made by those who lauded the internal reforms of fascism in
Italy and ignored the cost in freedom and liberty. Power is in it-
self dangerous. When we make it possible for financial power to
exercise substantial control over education, we endanger our wel-
fare. Perhaps the risk is worth taking in order to preserve freedom
of action to foundations. But we should be conscious of the risk,

• Reece Committee Report, p. 134.

* \Ibid p. 135.

FOUNDATION CONTROL OF EDUCATION 141

and alert to what transpires. The Walsh Committee had heard
witnesses testify to the fact that colleges had abandoned their re-
ligious affiliations in or before 1915 to conform to requirements
established by foundations! Today, school policymakers an-
ticipate the idiosyncrasies and preferences of foundation officials
in a manner similarly producing conformity..

Consider what The Ford Foundation could do with its billions
of capital. It could use this monumental fund to promote what-
ever educational theories a Dr. Hutchins of the moment were to
persuade the trustees to support.* Nor need it be difficult for such
promotion to succeed. The country is full of colleges and uni-
versities starving for endowment. The number of miserably paid
academicians is legion. Professors have to eat; and universities
have to pay their janitors. While it is possible that the majority of
academicians and administrators would resist, their aggregate
voices would not be as powerful as those of a minority of acad-
emicians subsidized in the publication of their writings, and a
minority of administrators whose institutions flowered financially.
How difficult to resist if pressure for change in educational con-
cepts were accompanied by a persuasive flow of hundreds of mil-
lions, or even billions! f

# I happen to support some of Dr. Hutchins’s educational theories. The fact
Is, however, that he was a power in The Ford Foundation and did promote
his own theories with its tax-exempt money. Whether his theories arc right
or wrong is beside the point. That the power which he exercised in educa-
tional circles could exist through the tax-exempt foundation vehicle is a
serious matter.

fit is encouraging that some educators, even at schools which have enjoyed
special foundation patronage, are beginning to complain against foundations
directing education and educational research. Just before this book was sent
to the press, there appeared in the New York World Telegram a report of
a lecture delivered by Dean Stephen M. Corey of Teachers College, at Colum-
bia University, in which he is reported to have complained that "Philan-
thropic foundations are beginning to shackle educational institutions in their
research projects by depriving them of a free hand in deciding the areas to
be looked into." "Decision-making," said the Dean, is being taken out of the
hands of the educators.

The report quotes Dean Corey as follows:

It is probably worth noting that within the past few years there seems
to have been a decrease in the disposition of foundations to make
grants to institutions that had independently arrived at judgments re-
garding the research they wanted to do. Foundations as donors are

142 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

There is much evidence that, to a substantial degree, founda-
tions have become the directors of education in the United States,
To what extent this has been brought about by conditions
attached to financial support since the early activities of the Car-
negie and Rockefeller foundations, it is difficult to assess. We do
know that their first efforts to reform the colleges were only a be-
ginning.

Accrediting organizations and other instruments in the form
of civic, professional, and school associations were created or sup-
ported to implement the reform plans of these two foundation
groups. The American Council on Education became their major
executive agency. Other clearing-house organizations, operating
variously in higher, secondary, and primary education, and later in
the field of “adult education,” received heavy support. Among
them were The National Education Association and associated
groups, The Progressive Education Association, The John Dewey
Society, The National Council on Parent Education, and The
American Youth Commission.

While the results of the first phase of foundation operations in
education were entirely beneficial, that cannot be said of later
stages. Together with an enormous amount of benefit, the founda-
tions were responsible, as well, for much that has had a decidedly
deleterious effect upon our society.

Research and experimental stations were established at selected
universities, notably Columbia, Stanford, and Chicago. Here some
of the worst mischief in recent education was born. In these
Rockefeller-and-Carnegie-established vineyards worked many of

coming more and more frequently to designate the problems that they
want studied as a result of their gifts.

The Dean was reported as saying that the trend of the foundations to set
the pitch "was most clearly Illustrated by operations of the Ford Founda-
tion and Us subsidiaries. He said they sought out research institutions to go
into ‘problems or practices that the officials thought critical'." — "A 'pathetic*
consequence, in the dean’s opinion, has been the great amount of time spent
by university personnel developing data that conforms to the ‘real ot fancied
interests of the foundation or government agency.’ This, he observed, 'tends
to remove the decision-making on research, that should be done, from the
persons who are most intimately involved in the research, the investigators
themselves.’ "

BIRTH OF EDUCATIONAL RADICALISM 143

the principal characters in the story of the suborning of American
education. Here foundations nurtured some of the most ardent
academic advocates of upsetting the American system and sup-
planting it with a Socialist state.

THE BIRTH OF EDUCATIONAL RADICALISM

Whatever its earlier origins or manifestations, there is little doubt
that the radical movement in education was accelerated by an or-
ganized Socialist movement in the United States. In 1905 The
Intercollegiate Socialist Society was created under the direction of
Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and others for the active promotion
of socialism. It established branches in many major colleges and
universities, where leaders were developed who were to have con-
siderable future influence; among them were Bruce Bliven, Freda
Kirchwey, (Senator) Paul Douglas, Kenneth Macgowan, Isa-
dor Lubin, Evans Clark, and John Temple Graves, Jr. Robert
Morss Lovett, a man with a total of 56 Communist-front affilia-
tions,* became the first president of the Society. Stuart Chase,
selected by The Social Science Research Council to write the
showpiece on the achievements of social scientists, was an early
writer for this organization. This Society was no transient or-
ganization. It still exists and operates today as a tax-exempt foun-
dation, having changed its name some years ago to The League
for Industrial Democracy.f

The movement generated or accelerated by the League was
likened to the Fabian Socialist movement in England by Mr,
Aaron Sargent, one of the witnesses before the Reece Committee.
Mr. Sargent is a lawyer who has had considerable experience in
special investigations and research in education and subversion.
He had been a consultant to the Senate Internal Security Com-
mittee in 1952 and represented patriotic organizations in nu-
merous public hearings concerned with educational and other
tax-exempt activities. At the Reece hearings, Mr. Sargent cited
Fabianism in Great Britain, a book by Sister Margaret Patricia

• Reece Committee Hearings, pp. 221-224.

t ft will be discussed in some detail in the following chapter.

144 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

McCarran, daughter o£ the later Senator McCarran, in which she
described the gradual extension of influence of the Fabian idea.
Mr. Sargent called the Socialist movement in America, that pro-
pelled by The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an offspring of the
Fabian movement.

The American movement seized upon some of the teachings of
John Dewey, who, as Mr. Sargent put it,

expounded a principle which has become destructive of
traditions and has created the difficulties and the confusion,
much of it, that we find today. Professor Dewey denied that
there was any such thing as absolute truth, that everything
was relative, everything was doubtful, that there were no
basic values and nothing which was specifically true.

Mr. Sargent added that, with this philosophy,

* # # y0U automatically wipe the slate clean, you throw
historical experience and background to the wind and you
begin all over again, which is just exactly what the Marxians
want someone to do.

This rejection of tradition carried with it an undermining of the
doctrine of inalienable rights and the theory of natural law which
underlie our system of government. It has become intrinsic in the
“liberal” philosophy which assumed the Dewey point of view that,
while there may be fundamental rights which are sacred, they are
subject to constant review. In any event, proceeds this approach,
some are not as sacred as others, whether or not they may be
listed together in the Declaration of Independence and the orig-
inal Constitution or its amendments. Certainly these “liberals’*
believe that the right to private property is only a second-class
right, or maybe third-class.

Mr. Sargent very persuasively told the story of the growth of
the radical movement in education. The Dewey philosophy took
hold just about the time John D. Rockefeller established his first
foundation. The General Education Board, in 1902. The era was

BIRTH OF EDUCATIONAL RADICALISM 145

one of reform agitation, and there is no doubt that much reform
was needed in various directions, But the moderate and sensible
reformers of the era were very often overwhelmed, and to some
extent seduced, by a small army of Socialists, crypto-Socialists,
and collectivists who took advantage of the necessary reform
movement to propel their own radical philosophies and theories
of government. These found grist for their mills in the teachings
of John Dewey. As Mr. Sargent said, they took advantage “of
the existing discontent to make considerable inroads in academic
fields.”

The National Education Association became enamored early of
the Dewey philosophy. It was at Columbia University, however,
the institution in which Professor Dewey taught so long, that per-
haps the greatest strides were made in applying this philosophy
to teaching. In 1916 the Department of Educational Research
was established in Teachers College (part of Columbia Univer-
sity). This department was responsible for the creation of The
Lincoln School in 1917, which, to use the words of a Teachers
College pamphlet, “kindled the fire which helped to spread pro-
gressive education.”

The same pamphlet* noted that John D. Rockefeller, through
The International Education Board, donated $100,000 to estab-
lish an International Institute at Teachers College. It noted as well
that a Dr. George S. Counts had been made associate Director of
the Institute, and Dr. Counts became one of the leading radicals
in education.

The growing radicalism which was beginning rapidly to per-
meate academic circles was no grass-roots movement. Mr, Sar-
gent cited a statement by Professor Ludwig Von Mises that so-
cialism docs not spring from the masses but is instigated by intel-
lectuals “that form themselves into a clique and bore from
within and operate that way. * * * It is not a people’s move-
ment at all. It is a capitalization on the people’s emotions and
sympathies toward a point these people wish to reach,”

* Reece Committee Report, pp. 147-149,

144 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

CARNEGIE FINANCES A SOCIALIST CHARTER FOR EDUCATION

Mr. Sargent gave convincing evidence that efforts to use the
schools to bring us to a new order, collectivist in nature, followed
a plan and that this plan was supported by foundation money. He
cited the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Commission
on Social Studies of The American Historical Association.* The
American Historical Association is the professional association of
historians and as such one of the organizations participating in
The Social Science Research Council. The work of its Commis-
sion was financed by The Carnegie Corporation to the extent of
$340,000. The Conclusions was the last section of the Commis-
sion’s final report, produced in 1934. It had an enormous and
lasting impact upon education in our country.

The Conclusions heralds the decline of capitalism in the United
States. It does not oppose the movement for radical change. It ac-
cepts it as inevitable:

Cumulative evidence supports the conclusion, that, in the
United States as in other countries, the age of individualism
and laissez faire in economy and government is closing and
that a new age of collectivism is emerging. [Emphasis sup-
plied.]

♦ 7 bid., p. 137 et seq. In one of his speeches in Congress, Mr. Reece referred
to a “conspiracy,'* and his use of this term brought down on his head the
anger and ridicule of the “liberal" press. While the term was a strong one,
Mr. Reece had some justification for using it. Since the preparation of my
manuscript, a book has appeared, a reading of which leads one to the conclu-
sion that there was, indeed, something in the nature of an actual conspiracy
among certain leading educators in the United States to bring about socialism
through the use of our school systems. (The book is Bending The Twig, by
Augustin C. Rudd, published in 1957 by The Heritage Foundation, Inc., a
most admirable and illuminating work.) To the extent that the movement to
suborn our schools was heavily financed by leading foundations, through the
Lincoln School, the Progressive Education Association, the John Dewey So-
ciety, units of the National Education Association, and other organizations,
these foundations must be held largely accountable for the success of the
movement. It is impossible to believe that the countless public utterances of
some of these organizations and their leaders which made theiT program
utterly clear, did not penetrate into the administrative consciousness of the
managers of the foundations which subsidized them.

CARNEGIE FINANCES SOCIALIST CHARTER 147
But that is not all. It continues:

As to the specific form which this “collectivism/’ this in-
tegration and interdependence, is taking and will take in
the future, the evidence at hand is by no means clear or un-
equivocal. It may involve the limiting or supplanting of
private property by public property or it may entail the
preservation of private property, extended and distributed
among the masses. Most likely, it will issue from a process
of experimentation and will represent a composite of his-
toric doctrines and social conceptions yet to appear. Almost
certainly it will involve a larger measure of compulsory as
well as voluntary cooperation of citizens in the conduct of
the complex national economy, a corresponding enlargement
of the functions of government, and an increasing state
intervention in fundamental brandies of economy previ-
ously left to the individual discretion and initiative — a state
intervention that in some instances may be direct and man-
datory and in others indirect and facilitative. In any event
the Commission is convinced by its interpretation of avail-
able empirical data that the actually integrating economy
of the present day is the forerunner of a consciously in-
tegrated society in which individual economic actions and
individual property rights will be altered and abridged.
[Emphasis supplied.]

# # #

The emerging age is particularly an age of transition. It is
marked by numerous and severe tensions arising out of the
conflict between the actual trend toward integrated economy
and society, on the one side, 'and the traditional practices,
dispositions, ideas and institutional arrangements inherited
from the passing age of individualism, on the other. In all
the recommendations that follow, the transitional character
of the present epoch is recognized. [Emphasis supplied.]

# * #

148 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

Underlying and illustrative of these tensions are privation
in the midst of plenty, violations of fiduciary trust, gross
inequalities in income and wealth, widespread racketeering
and banditry, wasteful use of natural resources, unbalanced
distribution and organization of labor and leisure, the har-
nessing of science to individualism in business enterprise,
the artificiality of political boundaries and divisions, the
subjection of public welfare to the egoism of private in-
terests, the maladjustment of production and consumption,
persistent tendencies toward economic instability, dispro-
portionate growth of debt and property claims in relation
to production, deliberate destruction of goods and with-
drawal of efficiency from production, accelerating tempo of
panics, crises, and depressions attended by ever-wider de-
struction of capital and demoralization of labor, struggles
among nations for markets and raw materials leading to
international conflicts and wars,

The report of the Commission proceeds to say that we must
make an “adjustment” between "social thought, social practice,
and economic realities” or “sink back" into a primitive form of
life. This adjustment must be made, apparently, in some col-
lectivist manner, for the report, continuing, says that there are
many varied theories to use, “involving wide differences in modes
of distributing wealth, income, and cultural opportunities.” I have
italicized the verb “distributing," which forcefully disclosed the
collectivist, planned economy objectives of the authors of the re-
port.

Cut no inferences regarding their intention are needed. They
were utterly frank in their recommendations. Teachers must “free
the school from the domination of special interests and convert it
into a truly enlightened force in society.” And the “board of ed-
ucation” must have as its objective "to support a school program
conceived in terms of the general ivelfare and adjusted to the
needs of an epoch marked by transition to some form of socialized

CARNEGIE FINANCES SOCIALIST CHARTER 149

economy .” * The Commission then discusses "the lines along
which attacks can and will be made on the problem of applying
its conclusions with respect to instruction in the social sciences.”
And the "pay-off:”

As often repeated, the first step is to awaken and consoli-
date leadership around the philosophy and purpose of ed-
ucation herein expounded * * *.f

This was a call to the teachers in America to condition our chil-
dren to an acceptance of a new order in process of transition. As
to the nature of this intended order, there can be no doubt. Pro-
fessor Harold J. Laski, philosopher of British socialism, said of
the Commission’s report:

AT BOTTOM, AND STRIPPED OF ITS CAREFULLY
NEUTRAL PHRASES, THE REPORT IS AN EDUCA-
TIONAL PROGRAM FOR A SOCIALIST AMERICA.*

Mr. Sargent's comment upon the report, produced by Carnegie
Corporation money, is highly significant:

What these gentlemen propose to do is set forth in their
chapter at the end talking about next steps. It says that it is
first to awaken and consolidate leadership around the phi-
losophy and purpose of education expounded in the re-
port, That The American Historical Association in coopera-
tion with the National Council on the Social Studies has
arranged to take over the magazine, The Outlook , as a social
science journal for teachers. That writers of textbooks are to
be expected to revamp and rewrite their old works in ac-
cordance with this frame of reference. That makers of pro-
grams in social sciences in cities and towns may be expected
to evaluate the findings. That it is not too much to expect
in the near future a decided shift in emphasis from median*

9 Emphasis supplied.

+ Reece Committee Report , p. 139,

%lbid>, p, 141.

150 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

ics and methodology to the content and function of courses
in the social studies. That is the gist of it.

This report became the basis for a definite slanting in the
curriculum by selecting certain historical facts and by no
longer presenting others, * * *.*

Did The Carnegie Corporation denounce or renounce this call
for a socialization of America? Indeed no. Its 1933-1 934 Annual
Report said this:

* * # Both the educational world and the public at large
owe a debt of gratitude both to the Association for hav-
ing sponsored this important and timely study in a field
of peculiar difficulty, and to the distinguished men and
women who served upon the Commission.^

This reaction of The Carnegie Corporation is most astounding*
In his statement to the Reece Committee, Mr. Charles Dollard,
the president of this foundation, contended that the Conclusions
and Recommendations of the Commission on the Social Sciences
do “not advocate socialism. “ He said that what the authors were
accepting was “not socialism. It was the New Deal.” He attrib-
utes their attitude to widespread disillusionment concerning our
economic system, prevalent during the years of depression. He
makes the further apology that once the funds had been granted,
the Foundation did not have “the power to censor or rewrite the
works produced under its grants." He takes the position that
“works will be supported by corporation (foundation) grants
containing views that differ from those held by trustees and of-
ficers."

Mr. Dollard does not explain the commendatory remarks of
the Carnegie foundation after the publication of the last volume of
the Commission’s report. Nor does he convincingly absolve the
foundation from responsibility for the Commission’s work. The
grant was not one for scientific research, but one essentially for the
development of new principles in education. As such, it supported

• Ibid., p. 153.

•\lbid., p. 141,

CARNEGIE FINANCES SOCIALIST CHARTER 151

the Eormulation of a philosophical value system, based on a
priori assumptions of goals of education and desirable forms of
government and social organization. Such a system might well
be supported by reference to facts in the manner in which Aris-
totle s Rhetorik advises the use of facts for the end of persuasion.
But the basing of principles on a priori value concepts is meta-
scientific. The work of the Commission was not a scientific search
but an effort to persuade America in favor of a new ideal in pub-
lic life and in education. The support of this project was essen-
tially political.

Mr, Bollard’s emphatic denial of the partisan-Socialistic char-
acter of the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Commis-
sion could mislead only those who had not read the work itself.
He may attempt to identify the concepts of society contained in it
as “New Deal,” and it is true that some of the Socialist convic-
tions disseminated by the document were shared by the fathers
of the New Deal. But the overlapping of the Socialist ideas of the
Commission with the New Deal did not absolve the financial sup-
porters of responsibility for this political undertaking. It is clearly
desirable that foundations abstain from tampering with scientific
research once a grant has been made to an unpolitical scientific
organization. When, however, foundation money is offered for a
program of a politico-social nature, responsibility for its impact on
society cannot be dodged by a semantic manipulation of terms
such as “socialism” and “New Deal.” It is not the proper work of
any foundation to promote the “New Deal” or any other political
deal.

There was consistency in the position of Mr. Dollard in defend-
ing the Commission’s work, in supporting the selection of Stuart
Chase and of Dr. Myrdal, and in supporting The Encyclopedia
of the Social Sciences after its bias became well known. It seems
fair to conclude that this consistency had at its base a sympathy
for the political objectives which these activities furthered.

One may wonder how it came about that foundations such as
Carnegie and Rockefeller, controlled by trustees whose member-
ship was overwhelmingly conservative, could lend themselves to

152 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

the radical movement in education. One answer I have already
given: they left decisions far too often to subordinate employees
and to intennediary organizations. Another is that they were to-
tally unaware of the pitfalls in the projects which they financed.
Foundation apologists explain it differently. They say that these
foundations made grants to respectable organizations and for
respectable purposes; having done so, they were obliged to keep
their hands off; therefore, they cannot be held accountable for
what was produced.

This justification of foundation trustees cannot be accepted by
reasonable persons. As I have pointed out, there is an obligation to
make sure that objectivity would accompany the operation of a
proposed grant. What is equally important — there is an obligation
to examine the product and, if it is found to lack objectivity , to
take means to protect the public against its effects .

The trustees of The Carnegie Corporation were acting in a field
in which they had only limited competence when they authorized
the heavy grant which produced the report of the Commission on
Social Studies . Granting, for the sake of argument, that they had
the Tight, nevertheless, to take what risks to society were involved,
their failure to repudiate the result was a dereliction of duty.
Upon learning that this product was "an educational program for
a Socialist America/* they might have offset whatever negligence
or incompetence was connected with the creation of the project,
by organizing another project, with at least equal financing, to be
made by a group of eminent educators who believed that our
governmental and economic system was worthy of preservation
and that the schools should not be used as political propaganda
machines.

THE RADICAL EDUCATORS

The report of the Reece Committee referred to numbers of the
educational £lite who supported and followed the plan laid down
by the Carnegie-financed Commission on Social Studies. They
were all, in various ways, connected with the educational complex

THE RADICAL EDUCATORS 153

supported by the millions of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and other
foundations.

Among the favorites of this foundation-supported radical move-
ment in education was Professor George S. Counts, a leader in the
project to use the schools to reform our political and social order.
A pamphlet entitled "A Call to the Teachers of the Nation,*' pub-
lished by The Progressive Education Association, a tax-exempt
organization largely supported by major foundations, was pre-
pared by a committee of which Dr. Counts was Chairman. It
included this “call":

The progressive minded teachers of the country must unite
in a powerful organization militantly devoted to the build-
ing of a better social order, in the defence of its members
against the ignorance of the masses and the malevolence of
the privileged. Such an organization would have to be
equipped with the material resources, the talent, the legal
talent, and the trained intelligence to wage successful war
in the press, the courts, and the legislative chambers of the
nation. To serve the teaching profession in this way should
be one of the major purposes of the Progressive Education
Association.*

In one of his many radical books, Dare the School Build a New
Social Order (John Day Company, 1932), Professor Counts said:

That the teachers should deliberately reach for power and
then make the most of their conquest is my firm conviction.
To the extent that they are permitted to fashion the curricu-
lum and the procedures of the school they will definitely and
positively influence the social attitudes, ideals and behavior
of the coming generation.

He continued, that a “major concern" of teachers should be “op-
posing and checking the forces of social conservatism and reac-
tion."

Ibid., p. 151.

154 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

Another professor of education named in the Committee's Re-
port is Professor Theodore Brameld of New York University, who
minced no words in an article in Science and Society:

The thesis of this article is simply that liberal educators who
look toward collectivism as a way out of our economic,
political and cultural morass must give more serious con-
sideration than they have thus far to the methodology of
Marx * * *.*

Professor Brameld, along with Dr. Gunnar Myrdal, was
among those “experts'* cited by the Supreme Court in the Brown
v . Board of Education segregation decision. These are strange au-
thorities for the Supreme Court to rely upon. That many men such
as these (politicians in educators' clothing) have achieved such
prominence may be laid closely at the door of foundation support.

Another of these “educators" gives us an idea of how close they
come to totalitarianism. In an article in The Progressive Education
Magazine , Professor Norman Woelfel wrote:

It might be necessary paradoxically for us to control our
press as the Russian press is controlled and as the Nazi
press is controlled.f

Professor Woelfel felt strongly that the £lite in the social sci-
ences should reform the world. His Moulders of the American
Mind was dedicated to

the teachers of America, active sharers in the building of
attitudes, may they collectively choose a destiny which hon-
ors only productive labor and promotes the ascendency of
the common man over the forces that make possible an
economy of plenty.J

And, like so many of his kind, he is against tradition and against
codes of morality. He wrote:

* Jbld., p. 152.
t Ibid., p. 155.
bid., p. 143.

THE PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 155

The younger generation is on its own and the last thing that
would interest modem youth is the salvaging of the Chris-
tian tradition. The environmental controls which technolo-
gists have achieved, and the operations by means of which
workers earn their livelihood, need no aid or sanction from
God nor any blessing from the church.

* * *

In the minds of the men who think experimentally, America
is conceived as having a destiny which bursts the all too
obvious limitations of Christian religious sanctions and of
capitalist profit economy.*

Elsewhere he wrote:

The call now is for the utmost capitalization of the discon-
tent manifest among teachers for the benefit of revolutionary
social goals. This means that all available energies of
radically inclined leaders within the profession should be
directed toward the building of a united radical front.
Warm collectivistic sentiment and intelligent vision, prop-
agated in clever and undisturbing manner by a few indi-
vidual leaders no longer suits the occasion.f

The educators of whom we speak were leaders in their field,
prominent in the counsels of that most powerful organization
of teachers, The National Education Association, which adver-
tised itself as "THE ONLY ORGANIZATION THAT REPRE-
SENTS OR HAS THE POSSIBILITY OF REPRESENTING
THE GREAT BODY OF TEACHERS IN THE UNITED
STATES/’ f

THE PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Quotations already given from publications of the Progressive
Education Association will indicate its character. Had it been de-

• Ibid., p. 144,
■flbid., p. 145.
X Ibid.j p. 146.

156 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

voted entirely to improving educational methods, it might have
served a worthy purpose in education, Its leaders, however, were
devoted not only to new methods o£ teaching (many of these
methods, found to be entirely impractical, have since been aban-
doned) but also to following the thesis of the Commission on So-
cial Studies that educators must use the schools to indoctrinate
youth into an acceptance of collectivism. Its periodical, The Social
Frontier, of October, 1934, stated in an editorial, that it “accepts
the analysis of the current epoch — outlined — in Conclusions and
Recommendations, Report on the Social Studies of the Commis-
sion of the American Historical Association. “

Its sinews of war were supplied by foundations. Up to x943»
says the Reece Committee report, foundations had contributed
$4,257,800 to this Association. What the aggregate figure is to
date, I do not know. During its long and intense career, the Pro-
gressive Education Association, which later changed its name to
the American Education Fellowship, created an unenviable record
of leftist propaganda, Its publications, called at various times
The Social Frontier, Frontiers of Democracy, and Progressive Edti-
cation, contain a long record of attempts to suborn our educa-
tional system to an acceptance of radicalism,

Typical is the issue of December 15, 1942, in which Profes-
sor Harold Rugg, of Teachers College, Columbia University,
contributed a “call to arms.“ He announced the Battle for Con-
sent. The “consent” was the consent of the people to change. His
theory was simple. Education must be used to condition the peo-
ple to accept social change. The social change was to be that, of
course, espoused by Professor Rugg, involving a war against some
of our most precious institutions.

THE COLLECTIVIST TEXTBOOKS

There were plenty of teachers ready to follow the lead of the
American Historical Association's Commission on Social Studies,
and their efforts extended into all aspects of education. New text-
books were required to take the place of the standard and objec-
tive works used in the schools. These new books could be used to

THE COLLECTIVIST TEXTBOOKS 157

indoctrinate the students, to give them the pathological view o£
their country upon which sentiment for collectivism could be
built. The writer of a conservative or classic textbook has difficulty
getting the funds to enable him to produce his work. At best he
must rely on an advance from a publisher, and it is rarely that
even a slim one might be forthcoming. In contrast, a foundation-
supported textbook writer, as a rule, can apply a substantial part
of his time, or all of it, to his writing. Moreover, the very fact of
foundation support (or the support of an intermediary distrib-
uting organization) for his project, and the consequent inference
of approval, will create a favorable climate of opinion for the
acceptance of his work by schools. At least before the recent
Congressional investigations, radical writers found it a simple
matter to get foundation bounty. Under the influence of cliques
in the world of teaching, the schools in the United States were
flooded with books which disparaged the free-enterprise system
and American traditions.

The notorious Rugg textbooks were of this class. They were
prepared by Professor Harold Rugg, who began, in the Lincoln
Experimental School, financed by Rockefeller foundations, to
issue pamphlets which grew into this scries of textbooks. Five
million copies of the books were poured into American schools
up to 1940 — how many since, I do not know. They were finally
banned from the schools in the State of California after a panel
of competent men appointed by the San Francisco Board of
Education unanimously held them reprehensible. One of the rea-
sons given by this panel was that these books promoted the thesis
that "it is one of the functions of the schools, indeed it appears at
the time to be the chief function, to plan the future of society.
From this view we emphatically dissent.” The panel's report con-
tinued:

Moreover, the books contain a constant emphasis on our
national defects. Certainly we should think it a great mis-
take to picture our nation as perfect or flawless either in
its past or in its present, but it is our conviction that these

158 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

books give a decidedly distorted impression through over-
stressing weaknesses and injustices. They therefore tend to
weaken the student's love for his country, respect for its
past and confidence in its future.

Mr. McKinnon, one of the panel, added that these books de-
nied moral law; that Professor Rugg was trying to achieve “a so-
cial reconstruction through education”; and that they promoted
change as apparently desirable in itself, and “experiment" in gov-
ernment, education, economics, and family life as of paramount
importance. “Throughout the books," he said, "runs an antire-
ligious bias." #

Let us take a closer look at Professor Rugg. In his book Great
Technology /f Rugg, who had visited China the previous year on
a mission to prepare a "social reconstruction and education” proj-
ect for that country, said:

Can independent ways of living be carried on any longer on
an irresponsible competitive basis? Must not central public
control be imposed on the warring, self-aggrandizing cap-
tains of industry? Can this control be set up with the consent
of a large minority of the people quickly enough to fore-
stall the imposition of dictatorship either by business lead-
ers or by an outraged proletarian agriculture bloc, which
seems imminent?

He asked these questions not about China but about the United
States!

Millions of textbooks written by this man were used, at one
time, in our country. In his Great Technology, his Social Chaos
and the Public Mind,\ and other works, he advocated social
change. Following the Recommendations of the Carnegie-
financed Commission on the Social Studies, he suggested that
such change required the indoctrination of our youth through the

* Report, pp. 149-150.
f John Day, 1933.

X John Day, 1933.

THE COLLECTIVIST TEXTBOOKS 15?

schools. He recommended that social science be the "core of
school curriculum” to bring about a climate of opinion favorable
to his philosophy.

Through the efforts of this and other followers of the Record*
mendalions, and through the operation of the patronage network
of Teachers College of Columbia University, the educational phi-
losophy which Professor Rugg espoused soon pervaded the Amer-
ican school system. This philosophy involves:

implementing an expectancy of change; picturing the Amer-
ica of today as a failure; disparaging the American Con-
stitution and the motives of the Founders of the Republic;
and presenting a "New Social Order.”

Professor Rugg characteristically advocated production for use,
not for profit (that old Socialist slogan); reconstruction of the
national economic system to provide for central controls, to guar-
antee a stable and a high minimum living for all; division of the
social income, so as to guarantee at least a ten times 1929 min-
imum for all; measuring wages by some yardstick of purchasing
power; reeducation of the “parasitic” middleman in our economy
and his reassignment to productive work; recognition that educa-
tors are a group “vastly superior to that of a priesthood or of any
other selected social class.” “Our task,” he said, was “to create
swiftly a compact body of minority opinion for the scientific re-
construction of our social order. This body of opinion must be
made articulate and be brought to bear insistently upon the dic-
tators of legislative and executive action. The alternative to this
extension of democracy is revolution.” #

In 1941 Professor Rugg denied vehemently that he was a So-
cialist or that he had ever been one. However, in 1936 he had
been a member of a committee of 500 supporting the Socialist
candidacy of Norman Thomas. He was a director of The League
for Industrial Democracy in 1934-1935. But no collateral evidence
of his political position is necessary to disclose his Socialistic point

# See Undermining Our Republic, Guardians of American Education, 1941.

160 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

of view. He has stated it himself in his numerous writings. His
employment of the Socialist plank “production for use, not for
profit’* is quite enough to identify him.

A group of ‘‘liberal” educators defended the Rugg textbooks.
Prominent among these was Professor Robert S. Lynd, a former
permanent secretary of The Social Science Research Council,
himself an advocate of change toward socialism. Professor Rugg
was also defended by a number of members of the Committee on
Textbooks of the American Committee for Democracy and Intel-
lectual Freedom.

The money for Professor Rugg’s six textbooks came indirectly
from Rockefeller foundation grants to the Lincoln School and
Teachers College. While foundations approached in 1922 had
refused direct support of the pamphlets. Professor Rugg reports*
that preliminary estimates set the amount of money required at a
sum far beyond that which the Lincoln School or Teachers Col-
lege could be asked to supply. They did, however, support the
project in other and altogether indispensable ways. In fact, if
they had not given it an institutional connection and a home, no
such undertaking could have been started. Even their financial
contribution, however, was considerable. It consisted of the writ-
er’s salary as educational psychologist in the school (1920-1929)
and as professor of education in the college, the salary of his secre-
tary (1920-1930), and an allowance for a part-time assistant during
several years.

Mr. Aaron Sargent also testified in detail regarding the Build-
ing America textbook series, which the Reece Committee report
characterized as another “attempt by radical educators financed by
foundations to suborn the schools.” j* It was The General Educa-
tion Board, a Rockefeller foundation, which provided over $50,-
000 for the production of these books, taken over and intensively
promoted by The National Education Association.

The State of California barred these books also from its schools,
after a legislative committee, the Dilworth Committee, investi-

* Building a Science o) Society for the Schools, 1934. p. 10.

•f Reece Committee Report , p. 154.

THE COLLECTIVIST TEXTBOOKS 161

gated and concluded in its report that they were subtle attempts
to play up Marxism and to destroy our traditions.

Mr. Sargent pointed out that there had been a "blackout" in
history teaching in California for about twelve years; during this
time no history textbooks were provided by the Department of
Education, which was operating under the radical-devised
scheme of "social studies." After an investigation, history books
were again furnished, as the law required. In the meantime, the
Building America books largely took their place, giving children
distorted facts and consciously directed misinformation regard-
ing our history and our society.

The report of the Dilworth Committee, as a result of which the
California Legislature refused any appropriation for the purchase
of Building America textbooks, concluded that these books do
"not present a true historical background of American history
and progress, and that the cartoons and pictures appearing in
said books belittle American statesmen, who have been upheld as
heroes of American tradition and have been idealized by the
American people; yet on the other hand the 'Building America’
series glamorizes Russian statesmen and fis] replete with pictures
which do great credit to these leaders of Russian thought.” The
report goes on to say that the "books contain purposely distorted
references favoring Communism, and life in Soviet Russia, in
preference to the life led by Americans."

In this regard, the Committee felt that pictures representing
conditions of starvation among American families hardly pre-
sented a true picture of family life in America. When children in
the yth and 8th grades, the Committee said, compare such pic-
tures with the illustrations of Russian family life, they will con-
clude that family life in Russia is equal or even preferable to that
in the United States." It was found that the "books paint present
economic and social conditions in America in an unfavorable light
and have the opportunity to propagandize class warfare and
class distinction." It was concluded, further, that the texts present
a materialistic picture of government and economy in America
and in the world rather than the idealism of the American way of

162 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

life. Specific criticism was made of the reference books listed in
the Building America pamphlets as guides to additional informa-
tion. These recommended books were found to be highly biased,
and likely to indoctrinate pupils in a manner contrary to the
best traditions of America.

The editors and authors of the Building America series were
careful enough to present both sides of various problems and
questions. This was done, however, in most instances, in a man-
ner strongly indicating editorial bias in favor of Socialist meas-
ures and ideas, a preference emphasized by the editors who se-
lected the illustrations. The pictures were likely to impress chil-
dren even more than the text itself and were selected clearly to
arouse doubts about American institutions and American histori-
cal figures.

The pamphlet about Russia contains numerous propaganda
pictures from Soviet information sources. The “objectivity” of the
authors may be illustrated by their statement: “The Russians
liked our system of government no better than we liked theirs.”
This implies that there is much to be said on both sides. It also
assumes an absurdity — that the suppressed Russians, unable to
speak their minds, favor the system which has been imposed on
them.

The Bolshevik revolution and regime are presented as a bless-
ing to the Russian people. In the description of the long road
which led to communism, there is not one word of fact or crit-
icism regarding the murderous Red terror of 1917 and 1918, or
the treachery of communism in destroying the hopes of Russia’s
democratic revolutionaries. Conditions in Russia are presented
wholly in terms of Soviet apology. There is a chapter on making
the State safe for socialism, including this: “Probably no other
nation ever made such rapid strides in extending educational op-
portunities for the people.” The depicted image of social prog-
ress contains no word of reference to the obliteration of freedom,
to the concentration camps, to the purges and to the worldwide,
Moscow-directed subversive activities.

Pictures of everyday Soviet life present scenes in a church, in

THE COLLECTIVIST TEXTBOOKS 163

art galleries, in concert halls, and at a meeting of a Soviet "trade
union” — the whole gamut of Red propaganda of the period*
“As more consumer goods were produced and the scheme for
buying and selling improved,” it said, the wants of consumers
were more satisfied. There is no mention, however, of the actual
tragic dearth of consumer goods, even before the German attack;
there is nowhere a picture of the privation of the Russian people
under communism.

Nor is this all. Fearful lest statements by outsiders might disil-
lusion the child readers of these books about Russia, the authors
are careful to prepare a defense. “Some writers mention some use
of force by the government to attain its ends." (I have emphasized
the double use of "some.”) Yes, some writers mention a denial of
the right to strike or protest; secret police; the absolute power of
one man over the lives of the people; and the lack of any civil
liberties in the American sense of the word — but the authors imply
that there is another sense, a Soviet sense of civil liberties. The
Russians, say the authors, have more self-government than they
ever had before; the new Russiajis call their dictatorship the
"democracy" of the working classes; there is no more discrimina-
tion against certain races and creeds; etc. etc. etc. The authors
have the effrontery to say that "rights that mean so much to
Americans — freedom of assembly and the press — are little missed
in Russia * * * to them [the Russians] the new leadership is
better than the old." They indicate also that, though it does not
appeal to Americans, the Russian system is here to stay.

The Dilworth report said of the book on China: "This book is
peculiarly useful to the Communists as a medium to further dis-
seminate the current party line concerning conditions in China.”
The pamphlet on civil liberties contains pictures of Sacco and
Vanzetti, of the Scopes trial, of Browder, of the Scottsboro Ne-
groes, of strike riots being subdued. The whole collection, in spite
of its pretended objectivity, is loaded with "liberal" propaganda.
It is a reminder of the "Aesopian" language used by Communists
in their communication system.

It is difficult to believe that The Rockefeller Foundation and

164 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

the National Education Association could have supported these
textbooks. But the fact is that Rockefeller financed them and the
NEA promoted them very widely. They were still in use in some
parts of the country at the time of the Reece Committee inves-
tigation.

Another foundation-supported piece of "education” literature is
a pamphlet entitled "The American Way of Business.” It was
one of a series prepared by the National Association of Sec-
ondary School Principals and the National Council for Social
Studies, both branches of the National Education Association, un-
der a giant from the Rockefeller General Education Board, to
provide teachers with source material on some social problems.-
Who wrote it? Oscar Lange and Abba P. Lerner. Mr. Lange will
be remembered as the professor at the University of Chicago,
when Dr. Hutchins was its president, who later renounced his
American citizenship to accept appointment as the ambassador
to the United Nations from Communist Poland. Mr. Lerner has
been a collectivist for a long time.

This book gives our children such ideas as these:

Public enterprise must become a major constituent of our
economy, if we are really going to have economic prosperity.

# # #

It is necessary to have public ownership of banking and
credit (investment banks and insurance companies).

# * *

* * * it is necessary to have public ownership of monop-
olistic key industries.

# * *

It is necessary to have public ownership of basic natural
resources (mines, oil fields, timber, coal, etc.)

# * #

* * * in order to insure that the public corporations act
in accordance with the competitive "rules of the game,” a

THE COLLECTIVIST TEXTBOOKS 165

special economic court (enjoying the same independence as
the courts of justice) might be established * * # and that
the economic court be given the power to repeal any rules
of Congress, of legislatures, or of the municipal coun-
cil's. * * * ”*

These texts, financed by The Rockefeller Foundation and dis-
tributed by the National Education Association, must have in-
fluenced the thinking of hundreds of thousands of defenseless
young Americans. They may well have contributed to the recent
philosophy of reckless public spending and overgrowth of gov-
ernment.

These books I have mentioned are but a few examples of
what has happened to teaching materials in our schools and col-
leges. Professor E. Merrill Root gives a quick survey of this de-
velopment in his Collectivism on the Campus, f in which he in-
cludes a chapter entitled, “The State Liberals: Their Textbooks/’
The rise of communism, he says, has produced a strange result
among the textbook writers. Conservatism is not even given house
room. Communism is disliked, but the only alternative offered is
"some such appeasement as welfarism or Fabian socialism." He
quotes Professor David McCord Wright of McGill University;

What sometimes happens, for instance, in economics courses,
is that the Marxian indictment is presented, followed by
some sort of "social-democratic" or heavily interventionist
answer, and that the capitalist case never gets heard at all,

The vast majority of textbooks now used in colleges and
schools on subjects in which a political slant could be given are
heavily slanted to the left, This was demonstrated by Professor
A. H. Hobbs of the University of Pennsylvania, whose work in
disclosing some of the vices and foibles of modern sociology
earned for him martyrdom in his career. In his analysis of a great
number of sociology textbooks in his book The Claims of Soci-
ology: A Critique of Textbooks, he found (p. 157);

* Ibid., pp. 155-156.

t Devln-Adair, 1955. See also, Bending the Twig, by Augustin C. Rudd,

166 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

Inclusion o£ a chapter on social change is an integral part of
the system of sociology textbooks. Such chapters * * * are
designed to leave students with favorable final impressions
about the subject. After depressing the student with por-
trayals of the amount of unemployment, poverty, crime,
vice, and slums; after shocking him with descriptions of the
insidious war propaganda and the horrors of war; after
creating in him qualms about the amount of social dis-
organization and raising him to rebellion against the "dead
hand of the past" upon society, the author of contemporary
texts must assuage him. Mitigation of the depressive efFects
of horrendous description of social evils is attained in a
chapter which is "constructive" "optimistic" "positive" and
"looking - beyond - social - defects - of - the - present - toward -
a-bright-future-which-we-can-make-for-ourselves" in outlook.

In seventy out of eighty-three texts, Dr. Hobbs found sections
devoted to social change. "There is agreement that traditions,
conventions, and social inertia are the principal obstacles to so-
cial progress. . . . Authors in sociology texts increasingly em-
phasize economic security as a fundamental social value and the
principal goal toward which social change should be focused."
Twenty-seven textbook authors call for the use of the social sci-
ences in a program of social planning. As used in these texts, the
term "planning” or "social engineering” involves control of social
processes by long-range subjection of society to guidance by so-
cial scientists.

Dr. Hobbs formulates the attitudes of the majority of the so-
ciology textbooks currently in use with these words:

Educational practices and principles which involve disci-
pline or drill, and the teaching of traditional beliefs about
the government, the family, or the economic system are
inefficient and harmful. These should be replaced by in-
cluding educational programs which will train students to
think for themselves and to behave only in accordance with
self-derived principles of "rationality." Independent think-

REFERENCE WORKS 167

ing will emancipate student personalities from the stultify-
ing effects of traditional beliefs and enable them to adjust
to existing social situations and to promote social change.

Democracy is highly desirable but the present form of
government is not democratic, principally because business
interests exert too much control over it. * * # Increased
government control over business and industry is the most
important step toward attainment of the political ends,
but such controls constitute only one phase of broader social
planning.

Maldistribution of wealth and income and unemployment
are the outstanding characteristics of our social system.

It is no wonder that some of our citizens, facing the political
character of so much of what purports to be sociological teaching,
have difficulty distinguishing among the terms " 'sociology,” “the
social sciences,” and '‘socialism.,,

REFERENCE WORKS

To both teacher and student, reference works are important in-
struments in the educational process. We have already seen that
the all-important Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, created
under foundation financing, was heavily slanted toward radical-
ism. Let us look at another reference work, The Encyclopedia
Americana.

Financed by The Rockefeller Foundation, both Columbia Uni-
versity and Cornell University established courses described as
an “Intensive Study of Contemporary Russian Civilization.” It
was chiefly to the staffs of these projects that the editors of The
Encyclopedia Americana turned to write its section on Soviet
Russia. A dramatis personae of this venture included such deeply
biased workers as these:

Sir Bernard Pares (who opposed American help to Greece
and Turkey and supported the claim of Soviet Russia
to Constantinople);

168 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

Corliss Lamont (whose record of procommunism needs no
elaboration);

Harriet L. Moore (named by Louis Budenz as a member of
the Communist Party);

Vladimir D. Kazakevich (one of the editors of Science and
Society , a Marxist quarterly; a frequent contributor
to Soviet Russia, a pro*Communist publication, Mr.
Kazakevich left the United States in 1949 after exposure
as a Soviet agent).

and others of very doubtful objectivity.

When the work was completed, Cornell University was so
pleased with it that, with the permission of the Encyclopedia, it
converted the Russian section into a textbook, USSR, which was
used at Cornell until 1954. In the meantime, many other colleges
and universities had adopted it, including Columbia, Rutgers,
Swarthmore, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Southern Cali-
fornia, Washington, and Yale.

At least 15 out of 20 contributors were, according to Professor
Warren S. Walsh of Syracuse University, “pro-Soviet in varying
degrees." About one third of the material in USSR was prepared
by Mr. Kazakevich. That he could have been selected for this
work was truly amazing. Professor E. Merrill Root, in his Col-
lectivism on the Campus quotes these words from Mr, Kazake-
vich, appearing on February 27, 1940, in Russky Golos:

The crocodiles of imperialism will continue to swallow
everything they get. For the neutral countries today the
English crocodile is more dangerous than the Gennan one.
In order to prevent the lawlessness of this crocodile, you’ve
got to drive a pole into the back of its neck.

Professor Root continues, "Perhaps this chaste language seemed
scholarly to the scholars of Cornell, for they invited Kazakevitch
to lecture on the campus during the summer. His lectures became
a part of The Encyclopedia Americana (as he was an ‘expert in a
special field’) and of USSR/'

THE CITIZENS EDUCATION PROJECT 169

Professor Roman Smal-Stocki of Marquette University has said
of USSR that it is justly called a "fellow-traveling guide to the
Soviet Union.*'

It may, of course, be true that The Rockefeller Foundation
bears no direct responsibility for what was produced. Perhaps the
projects which it financed were wholly desirable. Perhaps it was
entirely the fault of Columbia and Cornell Universities that a
strange collection of radicals and pro-Communists were included
on the staffs of the Russian projects, and the fault of Cornell that it
did not recognize or become concerned over the biased nature of
the book which it published. But the fact remains that it all came
about through Rockefeller financing. If this is in the nature of
that "risk taking" which many foundation executives maintain is
the duty of the modem foundation, something is badly wrong,
somewhere.

I ask again: is it not the duty of a foundation which takes such
risks to examine the results and to repudiate them if they have
been unfortunate? As far as I know, The Rockefeller Foundation
has done nothing to inform the public that it is not in sympathy
with what its financing produced in this instance or in any other.
Here, indeed, is a strange situation. Foundations consider them-
selves entitled to take credit for the outcome of a grant, the re-
sults of which are socially approved. On the other hand, when the
grant has failed, or if its product meets with disapprobation, or is
seriously questionable, then responsibility is shifted to die recipi-
ent of the grant. This is an odd interpretation of the "venture capi-
tal" concept. "We are entitled to take political 'risks' with the tax-
exempt money we administer," say foundation managers. "If the
project turns out safely, it is to our credit; if the risk turns out to
have been too great, or if the result is an unhappy one, that is not
our fault and we have no responsibility either to inform the pub-
lic of the error or to take any steps to correct the injury done."

THE CITIZENS EDUCATION PROJECT

The Citizens Education Project was created at Teachers College
of Columbia University under financing, far exceeding one million

170 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

dollars, provided by The Carnegie Corporation. “That the Project
was carried on with considerable bias to the left is unquestion-
able.”* There arises, then, the question of responsibility. The
Committee report stated that it was unable, without further in-
quiry, to determine whether this was the fault or the intention of
either the Project managers or of the Carnegie foundation. It con-
tinued its comment, however, as follows:

We do, however, see responsibility lodged with The Carne-
gie Corporation. It may not have had the duty to supervise
the project or to direct it in transit — this may even have been
unwise. But, as the project represented a substantial in-
vestment of public money and its impact on society could
be very heavy, it seems clearly to have been the duty of
Carnegie to examine what had been done and to repudiate
it if it was against the public interest. This, as far as we
know, Carnegie did not do.

What was the objective of this Project? To educate for better
citizenship. How was this to be accomplished? One of its chief
products was a card-index file. The cards summarized books, arti-
cles, films, etc., being arranged topically so that teachers could use
the files in teaching citizenship. The files were sold to schools at
nominal cost. In essence, this was “canned” material for teachers.
The teacher did not have to read a book; he or she could just look
in the card file and read a quick digest prepared by the Project.
There is some doubt that this method of teaching through canned
media is desirable. Granting that it might be, the greatest objec-
tivity would have to be used in preparing the digests and com-
ments on the cards, as well as in the selection of items to be in-
cluded. As the Committee put it:

* * # even those who believe in “canned” education can-
not defend the slant with which this card system was de-
vised, unless they believe that education should not be

• Reece Committee Report , p. i?o.

SLOAN FOUNDATION PROJECTS 171

unbiased but should be directed toward selected political
ends, and radical ones at that.*

The Committee report gave several, out of many, examples of
the radical slant. Books were included which could not be rea*
sonably defended as proper for recommendation to school chil-
dren— books by Communists and pro-Communists. Radical books
were given approbation; conservative books were given the doubt-
ful treatment. Let me give one illustration. The Road to Serfdom ,
by Frederick A. Hayek, a valuable commentary on the fallacies
of socialism, is called "strongly opinionated." In contrast, the
Building America textbooks, to which I have earlier referred, are
described as 'Tactual, Ideals and Concepts of Democracy/’

Many conservative books of importance were not even listed.
But A Mask for Privilege by Carey McWilliams was described
as “Historical, Descriptive/’ (Mr, McWilliams’s record of Com-
munist-front associations consume four pages of the Reece Com-
mittee report: 337 el seq.) Rich Land, Poor Land by Stuart Chase
(whose collectivise position has been described earlier) was called
"Descriptive, Factual, Illustrative." Building for Peace at Home
and Abroad by Maxwell Stewart (whose Communist-front associa-
tions consume about five pages of the Recce Committee report:
P* 375 ct $e(l) was labeled "Factual, Dramatic." And Howard
Fast’s The American was called "Historical, Bibliographical." f
(Mr. Fast’s Communist associations occupy four pages of the Com-
mittee report. He has since renounced the Party.)

SEVERAL SLOAN FOUNDATION PROJECTS

The Sloan Foundation, created in 1934, has had its regrettable
moments. Its intention seems to have been to specialize in eco-
nomic education and to seek truth through sound scholarship.
But it supported the heavily left-slanted Chicago Round Table
Broadcasts to the tune of 535,000 and the Public Affairs Pamphlets
with 572,000. It supported a motion-picture-making program at

* Ibid., p. 120.
j Ibid., p. 121.

172 FOUNDATIONS AND RADICALISM IN EDUCATION

New York University which concentrated on presenting the dark-
est image of the backward hinterlands of the South, possibly to
arouse compassion but more likely for propaganda purposes. It
deserves credit for having supported the sound economic teaching
program of Harding College. Whether it merits credit for having
contributed $19,000 to the Lincoln School at Columbia University
is questionable.

The Public Affairs Committee was directed by Maxwell Stewart,
a one-time editor of the Communist English-language newspaper,
Moscow News. Several witnesses have called Mr. Stewart a Com-
munist,* but we do not know what his party allegiances were dur-
ing his more than a decade of management of the Public Affairs
pamphlets. They had a circulation of millions of copies among
high-school and college students, among libraries, adult education
groups, and government employees. Among the members of the
board of directors of this publishing organization were such well-
known “liberals” as Lyman Bryson, Luther Gulick, and Ordway
Tead.

We find these names also: Frederick Vanderbilt Field, Mark
Starr, and Harry W. Laidler, all of whom may be classed as ex-
treme leftists. The presence of these names on the roster of any or-
ganization should have indicated to the Sloan trustees what the
publishing venture was all about. Among the authors of the pam-
phlets we find Louis Adamic, James G. Patton, Maxwell Stewart,
and E. C. Lindeman, Stewart wrote by far the largest number
of the approximately one hundred pamphlets. The style of these
books is reminiscent of the Building America textbooks. They
show a pretense of objectivity, but in giving both sides of an issue
they leave no doubt that they believe the left side is sound.

If my information is correct that The Sloan Foundation reor-
ganized its management and deposed those who were response
ble for its leftist orientation, there is ground for rejoicing and for
hope that other foundations, whose trustees have lacked alertness
in the past, may follow suit,

• See a description ot Mr. Stewart’s Communist-front associations, Ibid., pp,

876-379-

6

REVOLUTION IS NEARLY
ACCOMPLISHED

THE THIRD AMERICAN REVOLUTION

"In the United States we have had two violent revolutions: that
which freed us from England and that which sought to divide us.
I suggest we are now in the Third American Revolution, none the
less serious because it is bloodless. * * * This new revolution i$
a reform movement gone wrong. It has become an attempt to in-
stitute the paternal state in which individual liberty is to be sub-
ordinated and forgotten in a misapplication of the theory of the
greatest good for the greatest number," I wrote these words in an
article published in the American Bar Association Journal of May
1953* statement may not have been entirely accurate. Instead
of saying we are in the Third Revolution, I might better have said
' that it is nearly finished; that all that can be hoped for is a coun-
terrevolution.

"Liberals" have frequently announced that the revolution is
over . So said Dr. Mortimer Adler, upon whose judgment The Ford
Foundation (through its Fund for the Advancement of Educa-
tion) relied so heavily as to put him in charge of the philosophical
study of freedom, spending $600,000 on support of his philosophi-
cal education. Professor Seymour E. Harris of Harvard has put it
this way:

In the 20 years between 1933 and 1953, the politicians, col-
lege professors, and lawyers, with little help from business,

173

174 REVOLUTION 1$ NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

wrought a revolution in the economic polices of the United

States.*

Professor Harris should have added that the revolution was mate-
rially aided by foundations.

Over the past few decades the major foundation complex has
operated almost as an informal but integral arm of government,
acting, to a very considerable extent, as its collateral “brain trust,’*
and determining policy. If a revolution has indeed been accom-
plished in the United States, we can look here for its motivation,
its impetus, and its rationale.

COMMUNIST PENETRATION OF FOUNDATIONS

A good part of the impetus of the “revolution” came from Marx-
ists. To what extent some of it came from actual Communists, we
shall probably never be able to piece together adequately — but
there can be equally little doubt that much of it was Communist-
inspired. The presence of so many disclosed Communists in gov-
ernment during the New Deal and Fair Deal eras makes this
conclusion inevitable. There is, moreover, much evidence that
Communists made substantial, direct inroads into the founda-
tion world, using its resources to promote their ideology.

The Reece Committee has been castigated for asserting that
subversive influences have played a part in the history of founda-
tions in the United States. Yet it was its predecessor, the Cox Com-
mittee, which made this utterly plain, in so far as actual Commu-
nist penetration of foundations was concerned. That Committee
produced evidence which supported its conclusion that there had
been a Moscow-directed, specific plot to penetrate the American
foundations and to use their funds for Communist propaganda
and Communist influence upon our society. There was also evi-
dence that this plot had succeeded in some measure.

We shall never know the full extent of this penetration, but testi-
mony before the Cox Committee disclosed that The Marshall
Field Foundation, The Garland Fund, The John Simon Guggen-

• Reece Committee Hearings, p. 628,

COMMUNIST PENETRATION OF FOUNDATIONS 175

heim Foundation, The Robert Marshall Foundation, The Rosen-
wald Fund, and The Phelps Stokes Fund had been successfully
penetrated or used by Communists. The Marshall and Garland
foundations had, in fact, lost their tax exemptions. The Cox investi-
gation also disclosed that almost a hundred discovered grants to
individuals and organizations with extreme leftist records or affil-
iations had been made by some of the more important founda-
tions, including The Rockefeller Foundation, The Carnegie Cor-
poration, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Russell Sage Founda-
tion, The William C. Whitney Foundation and The Marshall
Field Foundation.

One hundred grants were not many, compared with the total
grants of the foundations. But Professor Rowe made clear, in the
following testimony before the Reece Committee, first, that the
problem is qualitative and not quantitative; and, second, that
the aggregate effect of Communist penetration cannot be measured
by merely considering the number of direct grants to Communist
individuals*:

In much of the activity that has to do with identification of
Communist activity in the United States, it has seemed to
me that we are going off on the wrong track when we limit
ourselves to efforts to identify overt Communists, or let us
say organizational Communists, people who carry a card or
who can be positively identified as members of an organiza-
tion subject to organized discipline . For every one of those
that you fail to identify, and it seems to me we even fail to
identify most of those, there are a thousand people who
could not possibly be identified as such, because they have
never had any kind of organizational affiliation, but among
those people are many people who advance the interests
of world communism, in spite of the fact that they are not
subject to discipline and do not belong to any organization: j-

• Reece Committee Report, pp. 199-200.
f Reece Committee Report , pp. 199-200.

176 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

• * * The people who can be trailed and tagged by the
FBI are a very, very small minority. They occupy a very
powerful position and a potentially important one, but the
people who do the important work are unidentifiable, and
if I were planning to infiltrate the United States, I would
see to it that they were unidentifiable.

Here it seems to me you have to set up an entirely different
category than the two categories of Communists on the one
side, and other people on the other side.*

# # *

* * * I would like to add this regarding the 1PR and re-
garding the problem of Far Eastern policy. You remember
some of my earlier remarks about the state of Far Eastern
studies in the United States 20 or 30 years ago, how I
said there was practically none of it; how some of the
foundations started to finance the building up and training
of personnel. It seems to me this kind of thing has to be
taken into account in evaluating foundation grants, namely,
that the area of ignorance in the United States about Far
Eastern matters was so great that here was the strategic
place in which to strike at the security of the United States
by people interested in imperiling our security and foster-
ing the aims of world communism. They would naturally
not pick the area in which we have the greatest intellectual
capacities and in which we have the greatest capacities for
defense. They would pick the area of greatest public ignor-
ance, with the greatest difficulty of defending against the
tactics of their attack, and so these people naturally poured
into Far Eastern studies and exploited this area as the area
in which they could promote the interests of world com-
munism most successfully in the general ignorance and
blindness of the American people.

So that it is not only quantitative evaluation that counts;
it is not only the numbers of grants or the amounts of

# Reece Committee Hearings, p. 536. Emphasis supplied.

SOCIALIST PENETRATION 177

grants; it is the areas in which the grants are given that are
significant. Here, you see, it seems to me, it takes a great
deal of subject matter know-how — quite apart from dollars
and cents — people and their affiliations or lack thereof, to
evaluate the impact on this country of any given founda-
tion grant, I don't care whether it is $50 or $5 million. It is
a qualitative matter, not a quantitative matter.4

SOCIALIST PENETRATION

The two recent Congressional investigations were largely con-
cerned with "subversion.” The Cox Committee interpreted this
term to include only international communism of the Stalinist
brand and organized fascism. The Reece Committee, in the
course of its work, came to give the term broader or deeper mean-
ing. Neither investigation established sharply, however, the char-
acteristics of Communist activity which would be clearly held to
be subversive. In the public mind, the term "subversion” is gen-
erally confined to Moscow-directed Communist activity, or that of
domestic Communists allied in an international conspiracy.

The emphasis on a search for organized Communist penetra-
tion of foundations absorbed much of the energy of the investiga-
tors and detracted somewhat from the efficacy of their general
inquiry into "subversion.” There are varieties of Communist sec-
tarian programs and propaganda of a dissident nature, aside from
those directed from Moscow. A follower of Trotsky’s brand of
communism may be no less a danger to our society because he op-
poses the current rulers of Russia. It is likely that there are more
Trotsky followers in the United States than followers of the Krem-
lin. Even among the formerly orthodox supporters of the Party
line, there has occurred a mass conversion to a domestic form of
the Communist theory and method.

Moreover, it is difficult to mark the line beyond which "socialism”
becomes "communism.” The line may be between methods of as-
suming power, communism being distinguished from other forms
of socialism by its intent upon establishing a dictatorship of the

♦J&W.,pp. 541-54?.

178 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

proletariat. But this line is by no means clear. Socialism has the
same ends as communism, though with an allegedly democratic
approach, The Communist Manifesto of 1848 is the basis of all
socialist parties the world over. Marx himself did not distinguish
between socialism and communism. Both advocate centrally
planned controls of production and consumption by the State,
public ownership of the means of production, and confiscatory
measures. They have in common the concept that, through a ma-
nipulation of public affairs, man can attain lasting happiness for
all, can make want and misery disappear, can eradicate war, and
can produce Paradise on earth. The major distinction between the
two forms of socialism, as asserted by the Communists, is that they
believe in the necessity of a temporary dictatorship of the prole-
tariat before reaching the Golden Age of social justice and uni-
versal happiness.

America has had a long tradition of Socialist fads and has
listened long to utopian arguments. In the 19th century there were
numerous Socialist communities in the United States. Robert
Owen, the founder of the cooperative movement and probably the
most important of the pre-Marxian Socialists, addressed the Con-
gress of the United States more than 125 years ago. He preached
“production for use, instead of production for profits.” He ad-
vanced the generally discredited theory of surplus value exploited
by Marxism in calling the proletariat to arms in a class war held
to be unavoidable.

The failure of our numerous experiments in communism has not
ended a longing for better forms of social organization. This long-
ing is evidenced in the ease with which preachers of utopian eco-
nomic systems still gather large followings.

The mandates of both the Cox and Reece Committees went fur-
ther than a mere exploration of “subversion.” The Cox Committee
was to inquire into activities which were not in the “interests or
tradition of the United States”; the Reece Committee, into the sup-
port of “un-American activities.” These terms are almost impossi-
ble to define with complete certainty. They can only be related to
a priori standards of value, standards which cannot be arrived at

SOCIALIST PENETRATION 179

through an empirical approach. There are conflicting ways in
which historical facts can be interpreted to prove what the tradi-
tion of the United States may be. One can make a case for the
claim that various types of sectarian socialism are traditionally
characteristic of parts of our farm population. One can submit
“proof" in the form of data about continued devotion to ideas
originally promoted by early religious community settlements, and
their survival in various forms of Federal farm support and soil-
banking schemes. However, there was sufficient general clarity in
the mandates of the two Committees for inquiry purposes. Social-
ism is basically antithetical to our system.

All Socialists do not recognize themselves as such. But it is,
after all, their private affair. They are entitled to be Socialists if
they care to, whether or not they are aware that socialism cannot
exist without force and oppression, that it must otherwise fail for
economic reasons. In a democracy, the citizen has the right to his
reasonable mistakes, disastrous as they may be to the public wel-
fare. The free contest of ideas would usually save us from such
evils as doctrinaire socialism. But, in our country, the free market
for ideas has rapidly declined. The one-sided support by founda-
tions of the utopian Socialists has created a constricted and limited
market place.

So the real problem which faced the two recent investigations
was the imbalance in the struggle of ideas, created by the prefer-
ence of foundation giving in the two decades from 1930 to 1950.
The virulent criticism to which Congressional investigation of
foundations has been subjected has perverted an investigation of
this imbalance into an alleged attack on civil liberties.

The true problem is not whether Socialists or extreme "liberals”
are respectable and entitled to their views but rather that their
opponents have been discriminated against in the allotment of
funds by major foundations. The ascendancy of Socialistic ideas is
attributable, partly at least, to this foundation-created imbalance.

The Reece Committee did not disparage liberalism. It said: "We
cannot too strongly state that this Committee respects the true lib-
eral and deems him as important to the proper political function-

180 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

ing of our society as is the conservative.0 It did attack the kind of
person who calls himself a “liberal0 but is not. Such a '‘liberal/*
said the Committee, “travels IN if not UNDER the same direc-
tion° as communism — he may even be “a violent and inveterate
opponent of communism/' but he gives it support by falling into
“the error of wishing to destroy before he knows the significance
of that with which he wishes to replace/1

And so, continued the Committee, the foundations have fre-
quently been persuaded by these ardent men-in-a-hurry to use
trust funds for “risk capital/* without fairly measuring the social
risk.

This “risk capital” concept, which has found such wide favor
among major foundation executives, propels them “into a constant
search for something new, a pathological scrutinizing of what we
have, on the premise that there must be something better/* There
is much room for improvement in our society, but much of what
we have is considered by the great majority of Americans sound
and inviolate. The pathological “liberal” propulsion into taking
social risks seems invariably to skip the study of what we have that
is good and should be preserved; instead, it supports change for
changes sake, or on the general theory that the different thing
must be better.* Much of this “risk taking" assists communism.

That Socialistic ideas can be legally promoted in the United
States, that prominent figures have openly adopted them in the
disguise of “reform,” does not make them any less “subversive.” If
one accepts the concepts and principles of the Declaration of In-
dependence and the Constitution as expressions of the existing
order, then any attempt to replace them with the concepts and
principles of socialism must be considered “subversive** and “un-
American/* Moreover, there is continued danger that the Commu-
nist who has recently been converted over to what might be called
simple socialism may switch back again in his allegiance. Many
of the intellectuals who departed from communism did so be-
cause they disagreed with Stalin; some of these will still support

• Recce Committee Report , pp. 201 -so*.

SOCIALIST PENETRATION 181

communism of a variety differing only slightly from the old or-
thodoxy.

If any American should know how the Communists operate, it
is J. Edgar Hoover. In an address in October 1955 Mr.. Hoover
said that the Communists do their most effective work through
“fictitious liberals.” These he defined as

individuals who through insidiously slanted and sly propa-
gandist writings and reports oppose urgently needed in-
ternal security measures; present the menace of communism
as a myth of hysteria; urge that we tolerate the subversive
acts of Communists because Communists are only “non-
conformists'’; pretend that the Communist Party is a politi-
cal movement and that it is improper to consider it a
criminal conspiracy to overthrow our government by force
and violence.

Such ideas may be presented even by people of comparatively
conservative leanings who fail to recognize the threat of socialism
and its incompatibility with our Constitutional rights. The Reece
Committee report gives an example of this process out of the
mouth of Mr. Pendleton Herring, President of the extremely
powerful Social Science Research Council. In an address to The
American Political Science Association in 1953, of which he was
. then President, Mr. Herring touched on a subject which is dear
to the hearts of “liberal” extremists and very valuable to Com-
munists— “civil rights.” A thesis of extreme “liberals” is that they
alone support the fundamental rights granted by the Constitution
— that the rest of us are in danger of destroying these precious
rights— that a “conservative” is almost perse against “civil rights.”
Mr. Herring contends that he is rather conservative. But he seems
to lack understanding of the fact that socialism and communism
are eventually destroyers of liberty, however respectable some of
their followers may appear.

The Reece Committee report commented on Mr. Herrings typi-
cally “liberal” speech as follows:

182 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

We regard as unfortunately typical, the address made in
1953 by Mr. Pendleton Herring, now President of The So-
cial Science Research Council, to The American Political
Science Association, of which he was then President. After
a discussion of the position and work of the political scien-
tist in America, and after emphasizing the necessity of em-
pirical approaches and of observing the cultural lag theory,
he launched into a tirade in the “civil rights” area.

Let us re-quote for guidance, the words of Mr. Hoover —
“It is an established fact that whenever one has dared to
expose the Communist threat he has invited upon himself
the adroit and skilled talents of experts in character as-
sassination.” Let us then quote from Mr. Herring’s address,
made under the cloak of office in two tax-exempt organiza-
tions supported heavily with the public’s money through
foundation grace. He speaks of “political quacks” who ask
“careers for themselves through exploitation of public con-
cern with the Communist contagion.” He does not identify
any one man against whom he may have some special an-
imus. His terminology, his selection of phrase, condemns
as “quacks” whoever try to expose Communists. He makes
no exceptions. He does not exempt from his excoriation
any Congressional investigators or investigation. He indi-
cates that investigating Communists may, indeed, be worse
than Communism. He repeats the hysterical claim that
books have been “burned.” How many and how often? Is
there truly danger in the United States of “book burning”?
He speaks of giving “cool, intelligent treatment” to “the
transmission of erroneous information and propaganda” —
is it not transmitting “erroneous information and propa-
ganda” to infer that there is widespread “book burning” in
this countryl

He uses the term “witchdoctors” to characterize the whole
breed of exposers of Communism. He speaks of “contrived
excursions and alarums” — implying that the Communist
menace has been grossly exaggerated for political reasons.

SOCIALIST PENETRATION 183

He refers to the whole exposure business as "MALARKY-
ISM," putting it in capital letters. He gives us this profound
comment upon our concern with the Communist menace:
“We must go from symptoms to the causes. A deep
cause, I think, is a failure to understand the forces operating
in the world around us. Why do so many Americans fed
threatened? It is the stubborn complexity of world problems
and the difficulties arising from ideological differences and
international rivalries that lead them to seek scapegoats
among their fellow countrymen/1

That is an astounding statement to come from one of the
top rank of those who disburse the public money which
foundations control. '‘You poor dumb Americans/* he might
well have said, “You are afraid of the Russian Communists
only because you do not understand the dears/'

Mr. Herring says: “Why assume that the conspiracy of
Communism is best exposed where the limelight shines
brightest?" He forgets that it has frequently taken a glaring
limelight to induce government officials to expose a Com-
munist— witness, among many, the case of ITarry Dexter
White.

Another example of the “cloak of respectability" (to which
Mr. J. Edgar Hoover referred) through eminence in the
foundation world, is to be found in public utterances of
Mr. Paul Hoffman, formerly Chairman of the Ford Founda-
tion and now Chairman of its offspring, the Fund for the
Republic. In an article To Insure the End of Our Hysteria
in the New York Times Magazine Section of November 14,
1954, Mr. Hoffman referred to the California Senate Un-
American Activities Committee as a “highly publicized witch
hunt/’*

Messrs. Herring and Hoffman are not ordinary citizens express-
ing a personal political point of view. They have been two of the

* Ibid., pp. 115-116.

184 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

most important characters among the dramatis personae of the
foundation complex,

FOUNDATIONS AND "SUBVERSION"

The Reece Committee concluded that because of the essential
identity of evolutionary and revolutionary socialism and commu-
nism, much of the radicalism which has been supported and
financed by foundations was "subversive.” It expressed itself as
follows:

Foundation spokesmen have emphatically denied any sup-
port of subversion. We question, however, whether in such
denials they did not misinterpret the meaning of the term
"subversion." Their denials were justified in so far as they
are related to the direct support of Communism, but these
spokesmen were well aware of the nature of some of the
evidence produced before this Committee which showed
that foundations had frequently supported those who wish
to undermine our society. Their denials of subversion in
relation to such activities are without merit.

What does the term “subversion” mean? In contemporary
usage and practice , it does not refer to outright revolution,
but to a promotion of tendencies which lead, in their m-
evitable consequences, to the destruction of principles
through perversion or alienation. Subversion, in modern so «
ciety, is not a sudden, cataclysmic explosion, but a gradual
undermining, a persistent chipping away at foundations
upon tuhich beliefs rest .

By its very nature, successful subversion is difficult to detect.
It can easily be confused with honest, forthright criticism.
In our free society outright and honest criticism is not only
permissible but immensely desirable. Individuals who en-
gage openly in such criticism, who criticize political in-
stitutions from a political perspective, and economic in-
stitutions from an economic perspective, should be given
free rein and encouraged. The issues involved in per-

FOUNDATIONS AND "SUBVERSION” 185

mitring open and honest criticism, however, differ vitally
from the issues raised by subversion promoted by founda-
tions. Some of these vital differences (which foundation
spokesmen refused to acknowledge, much less discuss, in
their conscious misinterpretation of the term “subversive”)
are these:

Fundamental to the entire concept of tax exemption
for foundations is the principle that their grants are to be
primarily directed to strengthening the structure of the
society which creates them. Society does not grant tax
exemption for the privilege of undermining itself . Reason-
able license is granted to satisfy personal idiosyncrasies,
with the result that there is much social waste when
giants serve no truly useful purpose to society. But such
tolerated waste is something far different from the impact
of grants made by foundations which tend to undermine
our society. Such grants violate the underlying, essential
assumption of the tax-exemption privilege, that the sub-
stantial weight of foundation effort must operate to
strengthen, improve and promote the economic, political

and moral pillars upon which our society rests.

# * *

In the modern usage of the term , r* subversion ” it is no
exaggeration to state that in the field of the social sciences
many major projects which have been most prominently
sponsored by foundations have been subversive .

Numerous examples of such foundation-sponsored projects,
subversive of American moral, political and economic prin-
ciples, were offered in testimony, Foundation spokesmen
failed utterly to provide any evidence that such heavily
financed and prominently sponsored projects were in any
real sense balanced by projects which promoted or strength*
ened the principles upon which our society rests. In this
sense, the weight of influence of foundation tax-exempt
funds applied in the social sciences has been on the side of
subversion.

186 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

Moreover, the subversive projects have been offered with
spurious claims to ‘‘science.’* With this false label they have
been awarded a privileged status. They have been offered
as “scientific” and, therefore, beyond rebuttal. The impact
of these subversive works has been intensified manifold by
the sponsorship of foundations.”*

HELPLESSNESS OF THE CITIZEN

Unhappily, the average citizen, even the normally well-informed,
has no fair chance to combat radical ideas flowing into education
and into government through the agency of foundations. The writ-
ings of the partisan educators come to the attention of the profes-
sional class only. By the time the ordinary citizens know what has
happened, they have been “subverted” — a tremendous pressure for
the imposition of radical ideas has been built up, and their propo-
nents have become well organized, entrenched, and implemented
to impose them.

The report of the American Historical Association’s Commission
on Social Studies illustrates the inherent danger in foundation
meddling in vital areas of public affairs. This report, it will be re-
called, was characterized by Professor Laski as “an educational pro-
gram for a Socialist America.” It started a flow of radical ideas
into education, ideas for which, it is safe to say, the average
American would have scant sympathy. But that average American
is not aware, even today, of the responsibility of this Carnegie
foundation-supported report for so much of the mischief wrought
in our educational system. The damage was done long before
there was any possible hope that the people could have been
alerted to defend themselves.

It is difficult to trace with any exactness the extent to which
foundation-supported ideologies have passed into government, or
the exact courses which this flow has taken. But there is evidence
enough that the flow has been full and serious. In its report for
1933-1934, the National Planning Board included this statement;

• Ibid., pp. 205*206.

FOUNDATION-SUPPORTED ANTICAPITAUSM 187

State and interstate planning is a lusty infant but the work
is only beginning. Advisory economic councils may be re-
garded as instrumentalities for stimulating a coordinated
view of national life and for developing mental attitudes
favorable to the principle of national planning.

The report acknowledged the cooperation, in the scheme for
more national planning, of certain “advisory economic councils”:
The Council of Learned Societies, The American Council on Edu-
cation; and The Social Science Research Council — a committee of
this last having “prepared this memorandum.”*

I urge a reading of pages 129-133 of the Committee report, to
get a more detailed idea of the concept of national planning which
the foundation-supported clearing houses had fostered and
brought into government. Consider, for instance, the report of The
National Resources Committee, which took the place of The Na-
tional Planning Board, which went so far as to advise “A New
Bill of Rights.” Not satisfied apparently with the “Bill of Rights”
attached to our Constitution, it contained these new “rights,” pre-
sumably to be guaranteed by the Federal government.

3. The right to adequate food, clothing, shelter, and
medical care.

4. The right to security, with freedom from fear of old
age, want, dependency, sickness, unemployment, and ac-
cident. (This is the “cradle-to-the-grave” security concept.)

6. The right to come and go, to speak or to be silent,
free from the spyings of secret political police.

g. The right to rest, recreation, and adventure, the op-
portunity to enjoy life and take part in an advancing civiliza-
tion.

AN EXAMPLE OF FOUNDATION-SUPPORTED ANTICAPITAUSM

It would be a vast undertaking, but well worth while, to attempt
to ascertain how many anticapitalist books have been foisted on
the American public through foundation support. The number is

* Ibid., p. isg.

L

188 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

indeed great. Here is one for which Andrew Carnegie, were he
alive, would hardly congratulate his trustees for having financed.

It is Business as a System of Power , written by Professor Rob-
ert A. Brady, under a grant from The Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching. In an introduction. Professor Rob-
ert S. Lynd says:

* * * capitalist economic power constitutes a direct, con-
tinuous and fundamental threat to the whole structure of
democratic authority everywhere and always.

Dr. Brady repeatedly alleges that BIG BUSINESS is an essen-
tial evil. The “great corporations" account for much of the current
mischief in our society, “Industrial capitalism," he says, “is an in-
tensely coercive form of organization of society," and great evils
flow from it. He is very clearly a collectivist. He just does not like
the capitalist system. The business system is “feudal"; it is “com-
pletely authoritarian (antidemocratic)"; its leadership is “self-
appointed, self-perpetuating, and autocratic." War, he indicates,
is essential for capitalist survival — a statement which is reminiscent
of Communist propaganda. The National Association of Manufac-
turers, he likens to the Reichsverband der deutschen Industrie;
and “Mr. Knudsen, Edward Stettinius and Bernard Baruch are
paralleled by Mr. Ogura in Japan, Lord Beaverbrook in England,
and Hermann Goering (himself a leading industrialist), Frieder-
ick Flick, and their group in Germany.." Big business, says this
seer, can result in fascism.*

The Carnegie Corporation followed the production of this book
very carefully and financed its publication,

THE LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

Some tax-exempt organizations have been bold and forthright in
promoting socialism and yet have escaped revocation of tax ex-
emption. One is The League for Industrial Democracy. Its pur-
pose is to educate the American people into an acceptance of so-
cialism. Mr. Ken Earl, a witness before the Reece Committee,

# Ibid., p. 117 et seq.

THE LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 189

termed it “an adjunct of the Socialist Party/' and his conclusion
seems amply justified.

After his exposition of the socialist character of the LID, Mr.
Earl concluded:

* # * Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, let
me say that in this presentation I do not quarrel with the
right of these many people in the LID, and all of those who
have been recipients of its awards or have spoken to it,
and I don’t quarrel with their people, to say and write the
things which we have discussed, though I disagree with
many of the things which they advocate.

My thesis is this: If the LID is to continue to fill the air
with propaganda concemmg socialism; if it is to continue
stumping for certain legislative programs; and if it is to
continue to malign the free enterprise system under which
we operate — then I believe that it should be made to do so
with taxed dollars, just as the Democrats and the Repub-
licans are made to campaign with taxed dollars ♦*

In his statement filed with the Committee, Dr, Harry W. Laid*
ler, executive director of the LID, attempted to show that the or-
ganization was no longer "Socialist” and that it was "educational”
in its activities. The fact is that comparatively few of its members,
associates, and officers are now members of the Socialist Party. But
no wonder. That Party, as Norman Thomas, its old leader, has ad-
mitted, has shrunk. But socialism is still with us, and far stronger
than in the days when there was an active and substantial party,
Most Socialists have gone elsewhere. Most now call themselves
“liberals,” As for the claim that the work of the LID is “educa-
tional” under the law, entitling it to receive tax-deductible dona-
tions, then if that is so, said the Reece Committee, “something is
very wrong with the law,”

The League for Industrial Democracy (formerly The Intercol-
legiate Socialist Society), to which I have earlier referred, started
life in 1905, Its name was changed in 198 1, but its character re*

* Ibid., pp. 105*106.

190 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

mained the same. I have pointed out that it called itself a “militant
educational movement” to promote a “new social order based on
production for use and not for profit,” calling this “a revolutionary
slogan'" and urging “the elimination of capitalism.” This organiza-
tion's publication, Revolt, announced proudly the wide dissemina-
tion of its inflamatory “educational” literature:

The LID emergency publications, The Unemployed and
Disarm, have reached a circulation of one-half million.
* * * Students organized squads of salesmen to sell these
magazines, containing slashing attacks on capitalism and
the war system * * *•*

Mr. Earl, in his testimony, piled up quotation after quotation to
show the true character of this “educational” organization. They
are far too numerous even to digest here. But I shall give a few
from the writings and official pronouncements of Dr. Laidler,
whose statement to the Committee denied its radical-propagan-
dist nature, and of others of influence or importance in the LID
organization (emphasis supplied throughout):

[The] recourse [of workers and farmers] now is to form
a political party which they themselves control, and through
which they might conceivably obtain state mastery over the
owning class. [Paul R. Porter, in Revolt, a publication of
the LID.] f

The LID therefore works to bring a new social order;
not by thinking alone, though a high order of thought is
required; not by outraged indignation, finding an outlet in
a futile banging of fists against the citadel of capitalism;
but by the combination of thought and action and an un-
derstanding of what is the weakness of capitalism in order
to bring about socialism in our own lifetime. [The Inter -
Collegiate Student Council of the LID, an affiliated organ-
ization.] J

♦ Ibid., p. 97.
t Ibid., p. 97.
j Ibid., p. 96.

THE LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 191

Watch now those little flames o£ mass unrest * * * . Great
energy will be generated by those flames of mass revolt. But
revolt is not revolution, and even though new blankets of
cruel repression fail to smother the fire and in the end only
add to its intensity, that energy may be lost unless it can
be translated into purposive action. Boilers in which steam
can be generated — if we may work our metaphor — need be
erected over the fire, and that steam forced into engines
of reconstruction.

Trotsky, in describing the rule of the Bolsheviks in the
Russian Revolution, has hit upon a happy figure of speech
which we may borrow in this instance. No man, no group
of men, created the revolution; Lenin and his associates
were but the pistons driven by the steam power of the
masses. The Marxist Bolshevik party saved that steam from
aimless dissipation , directed it into the proper channels .
To catch and to be driven by that steam is the function of
the radical parties in America today .

# * *

There are members who would pattern it [the Socialist
Party of America] after the German Social Democracy and
the British Labor Party, despite the disastrous experiences
of two great parties of the Second International. There are
members who have lost to age and comfort their one-time
fervor, and members who would shrink from struggle in
time of crisis.

* * #

They [the Socialists] must overcome the quiescent influence
of those whose socialism has been dulled by intimacy with
the bourgeois world, and they must speak boldly and con-
vincingly to the American working people in the workers'
language.

If their party can rise to these tasks then perhaps capital-
ism can be decently buried before it has found temporary
rejuvenation in a Fascist dictatorship. [Paul Porter, in Re-

192 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

volt . Note: Mr. Porter was an organizer and lecturer for
the LID and a missionary to thousands of college stu-
dents.]*

The crucial issue of industrial civilization today is not be-
tween laissez-faire individualism on the one hand and
collectivism on the other. History is deciding that question.
The question for us is what sort of collectivism we want.
Modern technology makes collectivism inevitable . But
whether our collectivism is to be Fascist, feudal, or Socialist
xoill depend * * * upon the effectiveness with which we
translate those political ideals into action.

You cannot fight on the economic front and stay neutral on
the legal or political front. Politics and economics are not
two different things, and the failures of the labor movement
in this country largely arise from the assumption that they
are. Capitalism is as much a legal system as it is an eco-
nomic system, and the attack on capitalism must be framed
in legal or political terms as well as in economic terms.

* * * a Socialist attack on the problem of government
cannot be restricted to presidential and congressional elec-
tions or even to general programs of legislation. We have
to widen our battlefront to include all institutions of gov-
ernment, corporations, trade unions, professional bodies,
and even religious bodies, as well as legislatures and courts.
We have to frame the issues of socialism and democracy and
fight the battles of socialism and democracy in the stock-
holders' meetings of industrial corporations, in our medical
associations, and our bar associations, and our teachers'
associations, in labor unions, in student councils, in con-
sumers' and producers’ cooperatives — in every social in-
stitution in which we can find a foothold * * *.

• # t

But the need of fighting politically within corporations and
trade associations and professional bodies, as well as labor

* Jbid.j p. 98.

THE AMERICAN LABOR EDUCATION SERVICE 193

unions, is just as pressing if we think that fundamental social
change can be secured in this country only by unconstitu-
tional measures.

In a revolution, when the ordinary political machinery of
government breaks down, it is absolutely essential that the
revolutionary force control the remaining centers of social
power. In Russia the success of the Bolshevik revolution
rested with the guilds or soviets, which were not created
by the Communist Party and which antedated the revolu-
tion. A socialist revolution in this countiy xoill succeed
only if our guilds, chief among them our engineering so-
cieties, have within them a coherent socialist voice .
[Felix S. Cohen, in Revolt .] #

Under a system where the basic industries of the country
are privately owned and run primarily for profit, therefore,
much of the income of its wealthiest citizens bears little
or no relation to their industry, ability or productivity.
[Dr. Harry W. Laidler, Executive Secretary of the LID in
"Toward Nationalization of Industry," a pamphlet widely
distributed by it, which expressly advocates nationalization
of forests, coal mines, oil, power, railroads, communications,
banking and credit. ] f

This Dr. Laidler is the man whose filed statement said the LID
i was educational and not Socialist!

If The League for Industrial Democracy is entitled to tax ex-
emption, then, like Mr. Earl, I see no reason why an organization
which is frankly created for the purpose of promoting the platform
of either the Democratic or Republican Party should not be tax
exempt. Or is it only Socialist propaganda which deserves tax ex-
emption?

THE AMERICAN LABOR EDUCATION SERVICE

This tax-exempt organization, supported by The Ford Foundation
and others, is engaged in the ‘'education” of labor. Its “education"

• Ibid., p. 98.

•{Ibid., pp. 102-103.

194 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

is of a special kind: political education. Its keynote was sounded
in an invitation of October 2, 1946, to attend a conference at
Milwaukee:

At the dinner, we shall consider methods labor must use
when collective bargaining does not work, especially meth-
ods of dealing with the government.*

The Reece Committee Teport summarizes the nature of this
foundation this way:

The background of some ALES staff members, together
with a list of participants in ALES conferences, suggests
an interlock with individuals and groups associated with
militant socialism and, in some instances, with Communist
fronts.f

The nature of the “educational” program of this Ford-supported
organization is indicated by the subjects listed for discussion at
various ALES conferences:

Political Action for Labor;

Political Action Techniques;

The Contribution of Labor in Rebuilding Democratic So-
ciety;

The Role of Workers’ Education in Political Action.

One conference strongly stressed

the urgency of participation in political action by labor and
the re-evaluation of education in relation to political action.

Nor was foreign policy to be neglected. “International affairs”
for labor received wide attention, and labor was urged to take part
in establishing foreign policy.

Action, action, action — is the constant demand!

The American Labor Education Service distributes two song

• Ibid., p. io6.
f Ibid., p. 106.

THE AMERICAN LABOR EDUCATION SERVICE 195

books. Songs Useful for Workers' Groups — some of the music hav-
ing been contributed by the Communist Hans Eisler— and a Rebel
Song Book . It circulates a series of pamphlets “for Workers'
Classes,” many of which were published by The League for In-
dustrial Democracy, some of them written by Harry Laidler, the
Socialist executive director of the LID. Plays are provided for the
education of the laboring man, many of them socially incendiary,
written by such eminent educators as Albert Maltz, who served a
jail term for contempt of Congress.

One of the leading lights of the ALES is Mr. Mark Starr, its vice
chairman, who has also been chairman of The League for Indus-
trial Democracy. Mr. Starr has had many opportunities to exercise
his influence for socialism. He has been director of education of
the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, a member of
the United States Advisory Commission on Educational Ex-
change, labor consultant to Elmer Davis's Office of War Informa-
tion, a member of the American delegation to establish UNESCO,
a labor-education consultant to the American occupation govern-
ment in Japan, and a member of President Truman's Commission
on Higher Education. He has also been Chairman of the Public
Affairs Committee.

Mr. Starr has no use for our economic system — he has explained
that carefully. He is a frank collectivist. And, ironic as it may be,
he has been a heavy beneficiary of Ford Foundation (Fund for
Adult Education) largess, though he has expressed himself re-
garding foundations as follows:

* * * colleges too often have to go cap-in-hand and ex-
ploit personal contacts with the uncrowned kings and agents
of philanthropy * * * . There are, of course, some foun-
dations which delouse effectively the millions accumulated
by monopolies and dynastic fortunes; but if one could
choose a way for the long time support of education, it
would be done by community intelligence rather than the
caprice of the big shots of big business who wish to per-
petuate their names in a spectacular fashion, a process which

196 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

may not in all cases coincide with the real educational activ-
ity of the college.*

LEFTISTS SUPPLIED TO GOVERNMENT BY FOUNDATIONS

It is an understatement to say that the majority of the Reece Com-
mittee was shocked at Professor Kenneth Colegrove’s revelations
concerning the extent to which foundation-supported organiza-
tions had been responsible for the penetration of Communists
and Communist sympathizers into the government as advisers*

When advisers were to be selected in social-science areas for
our occupation authorities in Germany and Japan, Professor Cole-
grove submitted, as Secretary of The American Political Science
Association, upon request of the government, a list of proposed
political advisers. While he himself was appointed and took office
as an adviser to General MacArthur (not at his own suggestion),
his list was completely ignored. He found, to his dismay, that the
advisers had been selected entirely from lists supplied by two
other organizations. One was the notorious Institute of Pacific
Relations, so generously supported by The Rockefeller Founda-
tion, The Carnegie Corporation, and The Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. The other was The American Council of
Learned Societies, another intermediary organization heavily sup-
ported by major foundations.

The Communist connections of IPR have been mentioned. In
the case of The American Council of Learned Societies, its Execu-
tive Secretary was Dr. Mortimer Graves, whose list of Commu-
nist-front associations impressed even the Cox Committee. Here
we have two of the executive agencies of what the Reece Com-
mittee report called the “concentration of power" or the complex
supported by some of the major foundations.

Professor Colegrove checked the list of accepted appointees. He
testified as follows:

We checked these names off. Some of them were known to
us to be Communists, many of them pro-Communists or
fellow travelers. They were extremely leftist.

• Ibid., pp. io8-io0,

LEFTISTS SUPPLIED TO GOVERNMENT 197

I went back to the Pentagon to protest against a number of
these people, and to my amazement I found that they had
all been invited, and they had all accepted, and some of
them were already on their way to Japan.*

The Committee report had this to say about Dr. Graves;

We do not accuse Mr. Graves of being a Communist. But it
amazes us that one with so evident a lack of political and
social discernment, with such apparent lack of objectivity,
should be retained as a directing officer in what purports to
be the representative organization for all the social sciences
and humanities. Mr. Graves still holds his position, though
the Cox Committee hearings brought out his extensive
record of Communist-front affiliations. This leads us to con-
clude one of two things; either his personal power is
astounding or the extreme political slant of an executive
is deemed of no moment by that tax-exempt agency of the
foundations.-}*

In writing the platform for the Communist League, Marx and
Engels predicted that the proletariat would "use its political su-
premacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to
centralize all instruments of production in the hand of the state,
i.e„ of the proletariat organized as a ruling class.” A considerable
number of the planks of the Communist Manifesto have become
part of the law of our land; but this has been accomplished not
through a seizure of power by a “proletariat” but through the mis-
guided efforts of our intellectuals. Most of these intellectuals lead a
life remote from the economic realities of society. Educators, in
general, are among the most Valuable of our citizens. But they
usually do not know the market place; their ideas of how an econ-
omy should or can run are often as impractical as they are idealis-
tic. True, they can sometimes support unrealistic theories with a
mass of empirical data, but it is usually both incomplete and un-

* Ibid., p. 201.

■\lbid., p. 55,

198 REVOLUTION IS NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED

sound because it excludes vital factors not susceptible to empirical
study.

The undeniable fact is that the changes which have taken place
in the United States were not the result of the “despotic inroads on
the right of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois produc-
tion ” They were the result of continuous propaganda in the form
of biased education. This propaganda has nearly convinced the
American people that the Marxian formula is good for it.

The fog-bound intellectuals who have advocated change on the
theory that things are not as rosy as they should be and, therefore,
anything else would be better, have blindly permitted themselves
to be led into the path of socialism. Whereas, today they generally
despise communism, the intellectual proponents of change in
America still consider socialism as eminently respectable. They
still do not see the central identity of communism and other forms
of socialism; they believe that a gradual transition of our society to
one in which “production” is “for use and not for profits” can pre-
vail without any suppression of freedom. The bloody extermina-
tion of liberty in Russia is, to these intellectuals, merely an evi-
dence that the Stalinist variety of socialism is reprehensible. They
are disappointed lovers, rather than true opponents. They are
blind to this fact: whether the approach to socialism is by way of
force or soft propaganda, the system will inevitably call for the
rape of the masses, for the suppression of liberty and freedom.

The ideas of socialism have too long been supported in our
country by fashions of thought which, in turn, have been heavily
financed by foundations. Critics of foundation activity have won-
dered, indeed, why foundations have had so little interest in sev-
eral obvious fields of “venturing.” They might well “venture”
heavily into studies of what is worth preserving in our system and
in our society; into education that promotes traditions and estab*
lished values; into public-affairs programs which promote national
pride and national ambitions.

There is some hope. The foundations today seem to be slightly
more cautious in supporting Socialist politics under the disguise of
education and research than before the Congressional investiga-

LEFTISTS SUPPLIED TO GOVERNMENT 19?

lions took place. But caution is not enough. In addition to taking
care to see that their funds are not used for anti-social purposes,
it behooves them also to support constructive programs in the so-
cial sciences, in education and in public affairs.

A number of foundations have made a substantial effort to this
end. The Lilly Endowment made possible, through a relatively
modest grant, the publication of the incisive criticism of modern
social science to which I have referred, written by Professor
Pitirim A. Sorokin, Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and
Related Sciences . The Bollingen Foundation publishes unusually
interesting books and supports scholars of merit in fields of cul-
ture usually neglected by other foundations. Even The Social Sci-
ence Research Council must be given a special award of merit for
recently supporting the brilliant but unorthodox work of Eric
Voegelin, Order and History .* The Foundation for Foreign Affairs
has supported a number of authors critical of communism, social-
ism and “liberalism,” and authors of conservative books. The Ford
Foundation directly and indirectly supports some research in
communism and may, in the end, contribute to a better under-
standing of this scourge of mankind. The work of the Erhart
Foundation, the Volker Fund, The Richardson Foundation, the
Pew Foundation, the American Economic Foundation, and a few
others has been unorthodox enough to support conservative writ-
ers and projects.

There is still hope that the trustees of some of those foundations
which have acted as the financial underwriters of socialism in the
United States may force a change in the ways of the organiza-
tions whose cerebral management they have neglected.

• Louisiana State University Press, 1957,

7

FOUNDATION IMPACT ON
FOREIGN POLICY

THE FOUNDATION COMPLEX IN "INTERNATIONALISM"

Foundation activity has nowhere had a greater impact than in
the field of foreign affairs. It has conquered public opinion and
has largely established the international-political goals of our
country. A few major foundations with internationalist tendencies
created or fostered a varied group of organizations which now
dominate the research, the education, and the supply of experts
in the field. Among such instalments are the Council on Foreign
Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, the Institute of Pacific
Relations, the United Nations Association, and the conferences
and seminars held by American universities on international rela-
tions and allied subjects.

It would be difficult to find a single foundation-supported or-
ganization of any substance which has not favored the United
Nations or similar global schemes; fantastically heavy foreign aid
at the burdensome expense of the taxpayer; meddling in the colo-
nial affairs of other nations; and American military commitments
over the globe. Though the sums of money put up by the interna-
tionalist-minded foundations may seem relatively small in compar-
ison with larger grants spent elsewhere, they have enabled their
satellite or subsidized organizations to play a conspicuous and
dominating role. This was comparatively easy to accomplish be-
cause there was no organized or foundation-supported opposition.

200

FOUNDATION COMPLEX IN "INTERNATIONALISM" 201

The influence of the foundation complex in internationalism has
reached far into government, into the policymaking circles of Con-
gress and into the State Department. This has been effected
through the pressure of public opinion, mobilized by the instru-
ments of the foundations; through the promotion of foundation-
favorites as teachers and experts in foreign affairs; through a domi-
nation of the learned journals in international affairs; through the
frequent appointment of State Department officials to foundation
jobs; and through the frequent appointment of foundation officials
to State Department jobs.

At least one foreign foundation has had a strong influence on
our foreign policy. The Rhodes Scholarship Fund of Great Britain,
created to improve England's international public relations but
not registered here as a foreign agent, has gained great influence
in the United States for British ideas. It has accomplished this by
annually selecting a choice group of promising young men for
study in England. The usually Anglophile alumni of this system
are to be found in eminent positions in legislation, administration,
and education and in the ranks of American foundation officials.
They form a patronage network of considerable importance. Dr.
Frank Aydelotte in a book, The Rhodes Trust 190^1951 pub-
lished in 1956, reported: “The influence of this group on Ameri-
can educational practice and particularly on the rapidly increas-
ing maturity and breadth of methods of instruction in American
institutions of higher learning, has been immense/’ He continued:
“The number of those going into government is constantly increas-

■ ^ n

mg.

Of a total of 1,37 2 American Rhodes scholars up to 1953, 431
held or hold positions in teaching and educational administration
(among them, 31 college presidents); 113 held government posi-
tions; 70 held positions in press and radio; and 14 were executives
in other foundations. Dr. Aydelotte remarks: “One indication of
the success of operations of the Rhodes Scholarships in America is
the remarkable way in which they have inspired other founda-
tions.” He reports that the Guggenheim fellowships and the pro-

202 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

gram of the Commonwealth Fund set up by Mr. Harkness and
several similar programs were developed with the aid of officials
of the Rhodes fund.

Dean Rusk, president of The Rockefeller Foundation, and sev-
eral of the staff members of that foundation are Rhodes schol-
ars. Mr. Henry Allen Moe, the director of the Guggenheim foun-
dation, and O. C. Carmichael, former president of the Carnegie
foundation, are Rhodes Scholars. Senator J. W. Fulbright, Con-
gressmen C. R, Clason, R. Hale, and C. B. Albert, and 14 Ameri-
can State legislators are also Rhodes alumni. Among the many
Rhodes scholars connected with our Department of State are these:
Ambassador to the Netherlands S. K. Hornbeck (formerly Chief
of Far Eastern Affairs in the Department); B. M. Hulle (former
Chief of North European Affairs in the Department); W. Walter
Butterworth (former Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Af-
fairs, U. S. Ambassador to Sweden, Deputy Chief U. S. Mission
to London); Walter Gordon (U. S. Embassy in London, in charge
of Economic Affairs with the rank of minister); and G. C. Mc-
Ghee (Ambassador to Turkey). Before becoming president of
The Rockefeller Foundation, Dean Rusk served as a deputy Un-
der-secretary of State. Dr. Aydelotte reports that, in addition,
12 Rhodes scholars were attached to various intergovernmental
agencies (ILO, UN, etc.).

It may not be merely coincidental to this subject that Cecil
Rhodes, who created the Scholarships, and Andrew Carnegie
were friends. The latter may have learned from the former the
technique of accomplishing great effects with relatively modest
means. Carnegie contributed but a small part of his wealth to The
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; yet this compar-
atively small unit grew to have gigantic influence on American
foreign affairs.

Just as there have been interlocks and a “concentration of power”
in education and in social-science research in domestic areas,
there has been a similar combination in the field of foreign policy.
The major components of the concentration in internationalism
have been The Carnegie Corporation, The Carnegie Endowment

FOUNDATION COMPLEX IN "INTERNATIONALISM" 203

for International Peace, The Rockefeller Foundation, and, re- •
cently, The Ford Foundation. I have mentioned some of their
more important satellites. Then there are the “conferences.”

One of the most important activities of the foundations and as-
sociated groups operating in the international field consists of pro-
moting conference after conference and forum after forum for the
discussion of international affairs. These would serve a useful
purpose were it not for the fact that they are almost invariably
made into platforms for the special points of view which these
groups favor.

A common character of the meetings frequently held all over
the country under the auspices of or in cooperation with the or-
gans of the internationalist foundations is that they regularly pre-
sent speakers favorable to the sentiments of these supporters. The
speakers, almost invariably and ad nauseam, advocate aid for
underdeveloped countries “with no strings attached”; distribution
of American foreign aid through the United Nations rather than
through American agencies; recognition of Communist China;
membership for Communist China in the United Nations; Ameri-
can abandonment of atomic weapons without guarantees for sim-
ilar disarmament by our enemy. Through their virtually monop-
olistic control of the market place for ideas in the area of
international relations, these organizations exert an influence far
beyond the weight of the general followers of “liberal” politics.
Their opponents enjoy little or no financial support. Thus, the
intensity of the “internationalist” campaign produces propaganda
returns even among businessmen and groups which would or-
dinarily, without the blasting of such propaganda, be inclined to
a more conservative point of view.

For example, the National Review of March 7, 1956, called
attention to the fact that The U. S. Chamber of Commerce had
been among the sponsors of a recent Midwest Residential Seminar
on World Affairs, held near St. Louis. It was in strange company.
Among the other supporting organizations were The American
Labor Education Service, The American Association for the
United Nations, The Social Science Foundation, The Institute of

204 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

International Relations, The Carnegie Endowment for Interna-
tional Peace, The American Library Association, The Foreign
Policy Association, and The American Foundation for Political
Education. The featured speaker at this seminar was John Carter
Vincent, discharged from the State Department as a loyally risk .

THE PART OF THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT

When Andrew Carnegie established The Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, he gave the managers of this fund a dif-
ficult task. How were they to go about promoting peace? They
seem to have had no very clear idea until Dr. Nicholas Murray
Butler, in whose hands Mr. Carnegie put the initial direction of
the fund, got excited about the peril of the Allies in World War I
and decided that the best way to establish peace was to help get
the United States into the War. To this end he began to use the
Endowment funds.

When the war was ended, that issue was gone. Support for the
League of Nations gave the Endowment one new outlet for its
energies and its funds, but more scope than this was needed for
the propaganda machine which it had become. A fruitful guide
for operations was found in Dr. Butler’s personal shibboleth of
'‘the international mind," a phrase to which he was devoted in
speeches and writings.

The concept of 41 the international mind” had considerable
value. Americans generally, in Dr. Butler’s day, were not as well
informed in international affairs as might be desirable; efforts to
educate them were commendable enough. But Dr. Butler went
further than a mere desire to give us a better international educa-
tion. He seemed to have had an idea that if only Americans got
more "international-minded” the cause of peace would be pro-
moted. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, as I state it, but there is
no question that Dr. Butler was somewhat possessed of the con-
cept of “international-mindedness.”

At any rate, a powerful propaganda machine came into being.
Used objectively, it could have been of enormous service to the
country. But, as is likely to be the case, it turned to advocacy.

THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT 205

When you control a propaganda vehicle, it is tempting to use it
to promote your own program.

The Reece Committee said of the Endowment’s work:

An extremely powerful propaganda machine was created.

It spent many millions of dollars in:

The production of masses of material for distribution;

The creation and support of large numbers of inter-
national policy clubs, and other local organizations at
colleges, and elsewhere;

The underwriting and dissemination of many books
on various subjects, through the “International Mind Al-
coves’1 and the “International Relations Clubs and Cent-
ers'* which it organized all over the country;

The collaboration with agents of publicity, such as
newspaper editors;

The preparation of material to be used in school text
books, and cooperation with publishers of text books to
incorporate this material;

The establishing of professorships at the colleges and
the training and indoctrination of teachers;

The financing of lecturers and the importation of
foreign lecturers and exchange professor's;

The support of outside agencies touching the interna-
tional field, such as the Institute of International Educa-
tion, the Foreign Policy Association, the American As-
sociation for the Advancement of Science, the American
Council on Education, the American Council of Learned
Societies, the American Historical Association, the Amer-
ican Association of International Conciliation, the Insti-
tute of Pacific Relations, the International Parliamentary
Union and others, and acting as mid-wife at the birth of
some of them,* .

The Carnegie Endowment was utterly frank in disclosing its
propaganda function. It used terms frequently such as the “ed-

f Reece Committee Report, p. 171.

206 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

ucation of public opinion.” This is not “public education,” but
molding public opinion. The Committee report indicated that one
thing seemed “utterly clear: no private group should have the
power or the right to decide what should be read and taught in
our schools and colleges/’ yet this is what the Endowment
sought to do in “educating public opinion.”

The influence of this foundation may be illustrated by the func-
tions held by its former president, Alger Hiss. He was a trustee of
The Woodrow Wilson Foundation, a director of the executive
committee of the American Association for the United Nations, a
director of the American Peace Society, a trustee of the World
Peace Federation, and a director of the American Institute of Pa-
cific Relations.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace made its
position clear. Its 1934 Yearbook complained about the

economic nationalism which is still running riot and which
is the greatest obstacle to the reestablishment of prosperity
and genuine peace. * * *.*

and referred to nationalism as “this violently reactionary move-
ment.” Nationalism is held to be “violently reactionary” in the
United States, but the organizations supported by the Endow-
ment apparently feel that nationalism abroad is a fine thing. Un-
der the slogan of anticolonialism, they have supported rabid na-
tionalistic movements, often Communist stimulated, in unde-
veloped areas, and have underwritten measures abroad highly
detrimental to American prestige and American private invest-
ments.

The 1946 report of The Rockefeller Foundation also minced no
words in advocating globalism. It read:

The challenge of the future is to make this world one
world — a world truly free to engage in common and
constructive intellectual efforts that will serve the welfare
of mankind everywhere,

♦ Jbid., p. 169,

THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT 207

The ideal of a united world as a basis for permanent peace is
a splendid one. But the executives of the international-minded
foundations have committed two serious errors in promoting it.
One is that they have been in too great haste to translate into
immediate action an ideal which might take another century
of extremely careful planning and adjustment to accomplish. The
other has been that the “common world” which they have en-
visioned and to which they have sought to rush us is unquestion-
ably an extended, international collectivism.

The Reece Committee came to this conclusion:

The weight of evidence before this Committee, which the
foundations have made no serious effort to rebut, indicates
that the form of globalism which the foundations have so
actively promoted and from which our foreign policy has
suffered seriously, relates definitely to a collectivist point of
\iiew. Despite vehement disclaimers of bias, despite plati-
tudinous affirmations of loyalty to American traditions, the
statements filed by those foundations whose operations touch
on foreign policy have produced no rebuttal to the evidence
of support of collectivism.*

In an affidavit filed with the Reece Committee, Dr. Felix Witt-
mer, former Associate Professor of the Social Studies at the New
Jersey State Teachers College, described his experiences as the
adviser to one of the International Relations Clubs founded by
The Carnegie Endowment,

Dr. Wittmer said that there were about a thousand of these
clubs and that, as a result of association with them, a great pro-
portion of the student members had acquired strongly leftist
tendencies.f At regional conferences, said Dr, Wittmer, “a large
majority of those students who attended favored views which
came close to that of the Kremlin/*

Speakers were provided by The Carnegie Endowment. Among

• Ibid,, p, 169.
f Ibid,, p. 174.

208 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

ihe speakers supplied to the club at New Jersey Teachers College
was Alger Hiss. When Dr. Wittmer protested against receiving
Hiss as a speaker, the Secretary of the Endowment, said Dr. Witt-
mer, reminded him “in no uncertain terms that our club, like all
the hundreds of other clubs, was under the direction of The Car-
negie Endowment for International Peace, which had for years
liberally supplied it with reading material, and which contributed
funds to cover the honoraria of conference speakers.”

Radical infiltration in the club of which Dr, Wittmer was ad-
viser became so pronounced that he resigned his position.

THE FOREIGN POLICY ASSOCIATION

Among the literature distributed by The Carnegie Endowment
was some produced by The Foreign Policy Association, which it
heavily supported. The research director of this organization for
years was Vera Micheles Dean. A staff report to the Reece Com-
mittee made this comment upon Mrs. Dean:

Reference has already been made to Mrs. Dean who, ac-
cording to The New York Times a few years ago, made a
"plea for socialism” to 600 alumnae at Vassar College, saying
our quarrel with communism must not be over its ends but
over its methods, and urging a foreign policy backing Social-
ist programs.

Speaking of her book Europe and the US, in the book
review section of The New York Herald Tribune on May 7,
1950, Harry Baehr, an editorial writer for that paper, wrote:
"In other words, she considers it possible that the world
may not be divided on sharp ideological lines but that
there may yet be at least economic exchanges which will
temper the world struggle and by reducing the disparity in
standards of living between Eastern and Western Europe
gradually abolish the conditions which foster communism
and maintain it as a dangerous inhumane tyranny in those
nations which now profess the Stalinist creed.” *

• Reece Committee Hearings I, p. 901, See also Report, p. 264.

THE "HISTORICAL BLACKOUT" 209

Among the Foreign Policy Association’s products were the Head-
line Books , One of these, World of the Great Powers, was writ-
ten by Max Lerner, a leftist who, conceding that "there are un-
doubtedly valuable elements in the capitalist economic organiza-
tions,” proceeded to tell the readers to whom The Carnegie En-
dowment circulated liis work that:

If democracy is to survive, it too must move toward social-
ism. * * # It is the only principle that can organize the
restless energies of the world's peoples.*

THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

The Council on Foreign Relations, another member of the inter-
national complex, financed both by the Rockefeller and Carnegie
foundations, overwhelmingly propagandizes the globalist concept.
This organization became virtually an agency of .the govern-
ment when World War II broke out. The Rockefeller Founda-
tion had started and financed certain studies known asv JThe War
and Peace Studies, manned largely by associates of the Council;
the State Department, in due course, took these Studies over, re-
taining the major personnel which The Council on Foreign Rela-
tions had supplied,

THE "HISTORICAL BLACKOUT"

One of the propaganda objectives of The Council on Foreign Re-
lations was promotion of the "historical blackout.” The 1946 Re-
port of The Rockefeller Foundation, one of the supporters of The
Council, contained this:

The Committee on Studies of the Council on Foreign Re-
lations is concerned that the debunking journalistic cam-
paign following World War I should not be repeated and
believes that the American public deserves a clear and
competent statement of our basic aims and activities during
the second World War.f

* Reece Committee Report , p, 176,

■[Ibid., p. 178.

210 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

This statement deserves pause. It has obvious political intention.
It cannot be considered objective. Several eminent historians have
written books critical of much of the government position in
World War I. It is nothing short of reprehensible for a tax-exempt
organization to smear such critical historians with the term " de -
bunking journalism ”

The plan called for a three-volume history of World War II, in
which there was to be no “debunking/1 Note that this clearly was
to be no objective study. The official propaganda of World War
II was to be perpetuated. As Professor Charles Austin Beard put
it: “In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies
and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in the coming
years the critical analysis, evaluation and exposition that befell
the policies and measures of Woodrow Wilson and the Entente
Allies after World War I.*

Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, in The Historical Blackout and
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, described what amounted to a
conspiracy to prevent the American people from learning the truth.
This conspiracy was foundation-supported. The Rockefeller Foun-
dation allotted §139,000 to the production of the three-volume
history which was to debar “debunking/' This is the same Rocke-
feller Foundation whose current president has, in two recent ad-
dresses, proclaimed its insistence on continuing to support “con-
troversy/'

THE INSTITUTE OF PACIFIC RELATIONS

I have discussed this catastrophic organization in some detail in
an earlier chapter. It need only be added that it was one of the
most important elements in the complex of international-minded
organizations financed principally by the Rockefeller and Car-
negie foundations. To the trustees of The Rockefeller Founda-
tion, The Carnegie Corporation, and The Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, I recommend that they place a large
sign in each of their board rooms reading “REMEMBER IPR,”
as a constant reminder of what disastrous results can flow from

• Ibid., p. 178.

FOUNDATION-PROMOTED "GLOBALISM" 211

abandoning supervision of activities financed by them and dele-
gating their authority and judgment to intermediary organiza-
tions.

INTERLOCKS WITH GOVERNMENT

There have been interlocks between the international-minded
foundations and the Federal government even as early as World
War I. The Endowment went so far as to state in its 1934 Year-
book that it

is becoming an unofficial instrument of international policy,
taking up here and there the ends and threads of inter-
national problems and questions which the governments
{sic) find it difficult to handle, and through private in-
itiative reaching conclusions which are not of a formal na-
ture but which unofficially find their way into the policies
of governments {sic).*

If we turn back to an earlier Endowment report (1925), we
may recognize that this proud statement in the 1934 report repre-
sents a paean of victory. The 1925 report said:

Underneath and behind all these undertakings there re-
mains the task to instruct and to enlighten public opinion
so that it may not only guide but compel the action of
governments and public officers in the direction of construc-
tive progress.f

That a foundation could openly propose a plan to influence public
opinion to the point where it, in turn, would coerce government,
is really quite astounding. With the great power of its money and
its patronage, such a major foundation carries the capacity to do
just that.

FOUNDATION-PROMOTED "GLOBALISM"

Considerable evidence exists that some of the major founda-
tions and a group of satellite organizations operating in the field

* Ibid., p. 177.

-{Ibid., p. 178.

212 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

of international relations had ignored American interests in pro-
moting ‘‘internationalism” of an unrealistic and dangerous na-
ture. Professor Kenneth Colegrove testified:

In my opinion, a great many of the staffs of the foundations
have gone way beyond Wendell Willkie with reference to
internationalism and globalism. * * * There is undoubt-
edly too much money put into studies which support global-
ism and internationalism. You might say that the other
side has not been as fully developed as it should be.*

This opinion was emphatically shared by an American dip-
lomat who should know his facts, Mr. Spruille Braden, former
Assistant Secretary of State. He wrote to me:

I have the very definite feeling that these various founda-
tions you mention very definitely do exercise both overt
and covert influences on our foreign relations and that
their influences are counter to the fundamental principles
on which this nation was founded and which have made it
great.f

The foundations to which I had referred were: "Carnegie En-
dowment, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rhodes
Scholarship Trust.” To those mentioned might be added the For-
eign Policy Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, the
Institute of Pacific Relations, and the United Nations Association,
all part of what the Committee majority called a "concentration
of power.”

Professor Colegrove examined a list of books distributed by the
Carnegie Endowment through its "International Mind Alcoves”
and through the International Relations Clubs and Centers which
it created and supported in hundreds of universities and colleges.
His comments on some of thesej run from "globalist,” through

* Ibid., p. 168.
j- Ibid., p. 169,

X Report, p. 173.

THE INTERNATIONAL "EXPERTS" 213

“ultra-globalist," “Marxian slant" and “subtle propaganda along
Communist lines," to “pro-Communist" and “well-known Com-
munist/'

One wonders what kind of an “international mind" The Car-
negie Endowment for International Peace intended to promote.
The incomplete list of books which Professor Colegrove examined
included works by such writers as Anna Louise Strong (a Com-
munist); Owen Lattimore (pro-Communist); T. A. Bisson (pro-
Communist); Professor Nathaniel Peffer (who advocated our giv-
ing up in Korea, “eating crow/’ recognizing Red China, assisting
her in her financing, and admitting her to the United Nations);
and Harold J. Laski (the philosopher of British socialism).

Dr. Wittmer mentioned in his sworn statement that the Endow-
ment had distributed books also by Corliss Lamont (a noted pro-
Communist); Ruth Benedict (co-author with Gene Weltfish of a
pamphlet finally barred by the War Department; her co-author,
be it remembered, refused to state under oath whether or not she
was a Communist); Evans Clark (a former executive of the 20th
Century Fund of wide Communist-front associations); and Alex-
ander Werth (a European apologist for many Communist causes).

THE INTERNATIONAL "EXPERTS"

The foundations participating in the combination of tax-exempt
institutions in international affairs may say that they have used ex-
perts where they have found them and that, indeed, if these have
been globalist, it is because most experts have the globalist point
oi view. The Reece Committee report had this to say;

It may well be said that a majority of the “experts" in the
international field are on the side of globalism. It would be
amazing if this were otherwise, after so many years of
gigantic expenditure by foundations in virtually sole sup-
port of the globalist point of view. Professors and re-
searchers have to eat and raise families. They cannot them-
selves spend the money to finance research and publications.
The road to eminence in international areas, therefore,

214 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

just as in the case of the social sciences generally, is by
way of foundation grants or support.*

Foreign policy is largely made by “experts” — technicians — in-
side the State Department and other “experts” who influence
policy from the outside. Through the operation of the foundation
complex in the international field, therefore, the overwhelming
majority of these experts, both inside and outside the Depart-
ment, have been indoctrinated with the globalist point of view
which the combine has fostered.

PROPAGANDA FOR UN

The “international-mind” obsession of The Carnegie Endowment
and its associated organizations has avidly taken up the United
Nations. No intelligent person could doubt the desirability of an
effective and sensibly designed international organization. But
the group of foundations and organizations of which The Car-
negie Endowment is a leading member apparently believes that
any organization should be supported if it is international. Noth-
ing else could explain the truly intemperate propaganda which
has been launched to indoctrinate our people into blind support
of the United Nations. There has been no disposition whatever
to be objective, to criticize what is fallacious and what is dan-
gerous. There has been no debate on merits. There has been only
propaganda in support.

This group of foundations, led by The Carnegie Endowment,
pours millions of dollars into propaganda to convince us that the
United Nations organization, as now constituted, is our light and
our savior. The contrary point of view expressed by many Ameri-
cans of eminence receives no circulation by this cabal for uncon-
ditional acceptance of the United Nations and the multitude of
its affiliates and programs.

The detailed operation of the UN remains a mystery to most
Americans. Supported to the extent of great sums by our govern-
ment, the UN has numerous departments, commissions, and

• Ibid., p. 182.

PROPAGANDA FOR. UN 215

agencies busily at work. Some may result in great benefit. Others
are unquestionably meddlesome, useless, or dangerous. This is
especially so because the proportion of Communist and Socialist
representatives on these agencies is usually high. The interests
of other nations come frequently into conflict with the national
interests of the United States. Under the pressure of foreign gov-
ernments, exerted often by a combination of collectivists, the
United Nations many times has produced resolutions and taken
steps in ways inimical to America. The Reece Committee report
urgently suggested that the extent to which foundations have pro-
moted “the theory that we must subordinate our own economic
welfare to that of the world in order to have peace is worth an
investigation of its own.”

A recent publication by UNESCO acutely illustrates the need
for such an investigation. Several years ago, UNESCO authorized
the preparation of a series of books on the social sciences. The first
of these has now appeared. It is called Economics and Action
and was written by the former French premier, Mend£s-France,
with a collaborator. There will apparently be no other book on
economics, so that this volume will stand, and be widely circu-
lated, as the approved, official United Nations bible on eco-
nomics. It is a strongly anti-capitalist and frankly, ardently col-
lectivist piece of work. Others than Socialists, Communists, and
extreme Keynesians will be horrified to read this UNESCO book,
largely financed with American dollars.

It will be interesting to see whether The Carnegie Endowment
or any of its associated organizations which so urgently propa-
gandize for the United Nations and UNESCO will offer even a
modest criticism of this publication.

Who knows what economic worldwide planning is being con-
cocted by UN agencies, much of which will later be promoted
domestically by these foundations, following their thesis that UN
is the only road to peace? Nor should we forget the attempts to
impose on us changes in our own basic declarations of human
rights. That proposed by UN ignored the right to hold private
property. Indeed in the Economic and Social Council of the

216 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

United Nations a resolution, adopted against the opposition of the
United States, established the principle that no government may
interfere with the right of other nations to expropriate or impair
the property of its nationals. This is a discriminatory measure
against private American investment abroad.

THE NEA JOINS THE PARADE

The National Education Association has worked overtime to incul-
cate into our children the idea that UN is a magnificent enter-
prise, upon which rests the world’s hope. Imagine this being
included in its Education for International Understanding in
American Schools — Suggestions and Recommendations , partly
financed by The Carnegie Corporation:

Through its Security Council, every dispute that affects the
peace of the world can be brought before an international
body endowed with authority to take all necessary steps for
the restraint of aggression.*

As the Committee report said:

To impose this concept upon our children in the schools
is to teach them nonsense. The futility of the United Na-
tions in settling international disputes has been tragically
evident. And this futility, moreover, is not the result of a
failure on our part to be “international minded.”

This book was prepared by the NEA's Committee on Interna-
tional Relations, The Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development, and The National Council for the Social Studies.
The use of the term “social studies” or “core studies” should al-
ways give pause . It is likely to indicate that children are to be fed
“ educational ” material in accordance with the recommendations
of the Commission on Social Studies of the American Historical
Association to which I have earlier referred — propaganda toioard
a collectivism which now has broadened to international collec-
tivism— globalism .

The same volume asserts that we must conform our national
•Ibid., p, 192.

THE INTERNATIONAL SSRC 217

economic policies to an international world economy; that the
“nation-state system’' is obsolete; that part of our political inde-
pendence must be surrendered; that we must engage on a
“planned economic cooperation on a worldwide scale”; and that
our children must be taught to become propagandists for these
ideas.* The school is to be a militant agent in the campaign for
the globalist idea,

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

Significant, too, was the creation of an International Social Sci-
ence Research Council. This was called into being through
UNESCO action and at the instance of Alva Myrdal. Mrs. Myrdal,
a militant Socialist who was once denied a visa by our State
Department, is the wife of Gunnar Myrdal, the author of An Amer-
ican Dilemma . Mrs. Myrdal was director of the Department of
Social Sciences of UNESCO when she proposed the formation of
an international SSRC in 1951- The first Council meeting took
place in Paris in December of that year. Donald Young took part
in this meeting and played an important role in the organization
of the Council. He was at the time president of The Russell
Sage Foundation and had previously been president of The So-
cial Science Research Council; he is one of the central characters
of the dramatis personae of the foundation complex. Another of
the chief American participants was Professor Otto Klineberg of
Columbia University, well known as a social scientist far to the
left and, incidentally, a contributor to An American Dilemma .

This new organization is worth watching. Apparently it is to
act internationally in the clearing house and directive fashion in
which the SSRC functions domestically. It seems to have intended
to ape the undemocratic set-up of its American counterpart. The
charter proposed at the organization meeting provided not for a
democratic representation of social scientists from the partici-
pating nations but, instead, for a method of self-perpetuating
domination similar to that which I have earlier described as in
use in the domestic SSRC. This form of organization would have

9 Ibid,, p. 193.

218 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

permitted the domination and utilization of this prestige or-
ganization by a closed clique, to the exclusion of all dissidents
and nonconformists.

FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL MEDDLING

If only the boards of trustees of great foundations, overwhelm-
ingly composed of responsible and well-meaning men of dis-
tinction, would come to realize that the great funds they ad-
minister can be used to as devastating an effect in the world of
men's minds as can the nuclear bombs in man's physical worldl
To rely upon professional employees to do their thinking for them
can be hazardous to an extreme. If that seems a strong statement,
consider the case of Mr. Hiss.

In 1947 Mr. Hiss was president of The Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. Its Yearbook then contained Recommen-
dations of the President to the Trustees. Now that the United
Nations had been established in New York, said Mr. Hiss, “the
opportunity for an endowed American institution having the ob-
jectives, tradition and prestige of the Endowment, to support and
serve the United Nations is very great." He then recommended
that the Endowment create a program centering its activities on
popularizing the United Nations and ^“assisting" it. This pro-
gram, he said, should be “widely educational" and should not
only create public opinion but “aid in the adoption of wise pol-
icies, both by our own government in its capacity as a member of
the United Nations, and by the United Nations Organization as a
whole."

The following section of Mr. Hiss’s recommendations is worth
reproducing in its entirety:

The number and importance of decisions in the field of
foreign relations with which the United States will be faced
during the next few years are of such magnitude that the
widest possible stimulation of public education in this field
is of major and pressing importance. In furthering its educa-
tional objectives the Endowment should utilize its existing
resources, such as The International Relations Clubs in

FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL MEDDLING 219

the colleges, and hiternational Conciliation , and should
strengthen its relationships with existing agencies interested
in the field of foreign affairs. These relationships should in-
clude close collaboration with other organizations principally
engaged in the study of foreign affairs, such as The Council
on Foreign Relations, The Foreign Policy Association, The
Institute of Pacific Relations, the developing university
centers of international studies, and local community groups
interested in foreign affairs of which the Cleveland Council
on World Affairs and the projected World Affairs Council -
in San Francisco are examples.

Of particular importance is the unusual opportunity of
reaching large segments of the population by establishing
relations of a rather novel sort with the large national
organizations which today are desirous of supplying their
members with objective information on public affairs, in-
cluding international issues, These organizations — designed
to serve, respectively, the broad interests of business, church,
women’s, farm, labor, veterans’, educational, and other large
groups of our citizens — are not equipped to set up foreign
policy research staffs of their own. The Endoxoment should
supply these organizations with basic information about
the United Nations and should assist them both in selecting
topics of interest to their members and in presenting those
topics so as to be most readily understood by their members.
We should urge The Foreign Policy Association and The
Institute of Pacific Relations to supply similar service on
other topics of international significance.

Exploration should also be made by the Endowment as to
the possibilities of increasing the effectiveness of the radio
and motion pictures in public education on world affairs.*

To what extent Mr. Hiss managed to get his program rolling
before his departure for prison, I do not know. He was not long
enough in office to perpetrate on the American public as much
damage as he was capable of. But one can well see today the

# Ibid., p. 184,

220 FOUNDATION IMPACT ON FOREIGN POLICY

execution, by his successors, of the policies formulated in the
1947 Yearbook . And it is worthy of note that his recommendations
speak in terms of using a complex or close interlocking associa-
tion with other foundations and kindred groups, including the
nefarious Institute of Pacific Relations,

A propaganda agency such as The Carnegie Endowment can
so easily become a vehicle for intended subversion. What is
equally dangerous is that it can fall into the administrative hands
of incompetent, negligent, or misguided persons, against whom
the trustees, ultimately responsible for its action, can protect
themselves only through either the most attentive alertness or
through an abandonment of the basically hazardous occupation
of propaganda.

As Dr. Frederick P. Keppel, himself president of The Carnegie
Corporation, a sister organization to the Endowment, put it*:

Danger arises whenever any group with power in its hands,
whether it be a state legislature, or the board of a univer-
sity or of a foundation, believes it to be its business to use
its power to direct opinion. Any such group is a dangerous
group, regardless of the manner of its make-up, and re-
gardless of whether its action is conscious or unconscious,
and, if conscious, whether benign or sinister in purpose.

Mr. Joseph E. Johnson, president of The Carnegie Endowment,
played down the role of his foundation in world affairs in his
statement to the Reece Committee. He attributed changes in
American attitudes toward foreign relations to the problems cre-
ated by modem social and political upheavals, by new inventions,
and by two world wars. This argument is not convincing. Even if
the Endowment merely reinforced what was a basic trend, its ac-
tivities could not help but have a strong, accelerating impact on
public opinion. The Endowment, in any event, has not confined
itself to studies and discussions of public issues but has engaged
in political propaganda for particular points of view, much of
this propaganda directed to influencing legislation,

• Quoted with approval in Andrews, Philanthropic Foundations , p. 203.

e

THE FORD FOUNDATION
GARGANTUA OF
PHILANTHROPY

A NEW POLICY?

Among the giant foundations, The Ford Foundation is by far
the largest. It was established in 1936. In 1949, the trustees finally
arrived at a definitive program to “carry out the broader purposes
envisaged for the Foundation by its founders and benefactors*'
and to reorganize within the framework of policies supposedly es-
tablished by Henry Ford and his son Edsel. This program was the
result of a mountain of labor by a committee of advisers under
the leadership of H. Rowan Gaither, who later became president
of the Foundation, The result did not differ greatly from the pat-
tern of operations of earlier foundations such as those of Carnegie,
Rockefeller, Sage, and others created for social and scholarly pur-
poses.

The one real novelty in the Ford operation was its size. It ad-
ministered billions in capital, and an annual income of some
$100,000,000. The challenge and the responsibility of this wealth
are beyond comparison with any historic precedent. The power
to spend these trust funds for good or for bad, or simply to piddle
them away in squandering ventures called for precautions in de-
cision making far more serious than those required in a business
enterprise.

In 1956 Dr. Henry T, Heald, formerly president of New York
University, became president of The Ford Foundation, succeed-
ing Mr. Gaither, who was moved up from president to chairman

221

222 THE FORD FOUNDATION

of the board. The appointment of Dr. Heald was encouraging, not
only because of his ability, character and experience but also be-
cause it may indicate a growing awareness on the part of the trus-
tees of the many grave mistakes which had been made by the
Foundation during the years which followed the adoption of the
1 949 platform.

There are some signs that Dr. Heald realizes that household
alterations are in order. He has stated in public utterances that
the Foundation's program is subject to continuous review and
evaluation; that existing programs are sometimes dropped and
that changes and the creation of new programs follow only upon
careful study. He must certainly understand the importance of
the Foundation’s directive personnel and, while only limited al-
terations have been made to date in the personnel setup, a new
broom cannot, after ail, always sweep clean overnight.

Dr. Heald stated in one address that four fifths of the money
spent by the Foundation to the end of 1956 (about a billion)
was devoted to education. His emphasis on education is in it-
self very encouraging. However, he used the term “education”
in its broadest sense. For a foundation “that attempts to work for
the public welfare, the principal instrument through which it can
work," he said, “is education in general and higher education
in particular." In supporting this statement, he uses an argu-
ment typical of foundation executives, the alleged need for social
change and the benefits of such change. He suggests that it is
“virtually impossible to make real and lasting progress for man-
kind without education and its constant extension in scope and
improvement in quality." This statement is beyond questioning.
But he explains further: “By definition, improvement implies and
involves change. Change is not something to fear or avoid. Change
is not only inevitable but desirable. Problems are solved, ills
corrected, progress made by change."

He does add: “But first there must be an admission, a recogni-
tion that a problem exists. Then men of good will must go about
changing things." However, this qualification seems to miss the
possibility that, as to many “problems,” change is not desirable.

A NEW POLICY? 223

To illustrate, a democracy is certainly inefficient. Thus, a problem
exists. That does not mean that change from a democracy is
desirable. To illustrate again, a problem is created by the fact
that a centralized government could accomplish many functions
far more effectively than a federal system. Does that mean that a
change is needed or desirable?

Dr. Heald adds: "If nothing needs changing, then we are all
wasting our time and our resources, for there is nothing really to
be done except to feed and clothe people.". This emphasis on
change is classic among the executives of the “concentration of
power." There is, after all, much that a foundation can do, which
does not involve promoting “change," in addition to feeding and
clothing people. No one in his right mind would assert that no im-
provements in our society are possible or desirable, but the em-
phasis on change by the newly elected president of the largest
foundation in the world* implies an eagerness to pursue what
Professor Colegrove has called the “pathological" approach to re-
search. Dr. Heald believes in the power of man “to leave the
world a better place than it was when he entered it." This is a
proposition which, again, one can readily accept. But is it true, as
he says, that the challenge can only be met “by changing the
environment in which [man] finds himself — always, we hope, for
the better; always working for social and economic improvements
in the lot of all people * * *"? Does this concern for betterment
in the material world of “social and economic improvement" not
indicate a neglect of the nonmaterial, the spiritual values which
have at least as much importance as the physical?

What could be more obvious than that change is desirable
when it is desirable? But the emphasis so frequently put by foun-
dation leaders on “change" often results in advocating change be-
cause it is change — as though there were a certainty of improve-
ment if there were a change.

Dr. Heald has adopted the “risk-capital" and “experimentation"
concepts. It is not yet clear whether his interpretation of these two

•At the October n, 195G, meeting of the American Council on Education,

224 THE FORD FOUNDATION

terms follows the general line of the complex. It is encouraging
to have him say that a foundation sometimes should even support
the exploration of unpopular ideas. A dedication to the support
of the nonconformist is most laudable, and we can only hope that
it is followed. The Ford Foundation has not demonstrated this
dedication in the past. Quite to the contrary, it has, in most in-
stances, supported the ruling clique of materialistic social scien-
tists who once were a minority but long since have become, with
foundation assistance, a clear majority. I regret that I have not
seen, in any of Dr. Heald’s public utterances, any consciousness
of the danger of supporting this type of conformity.

In many areas this ruling clique in the social sciences, so well
supported by The Ford Foundation and others, advocates change
of institutions, principles, and methods, and of social, economic,
and political mechanisms which a great many people (in some in-
stances a vast majority of the people) wish to have retained as
they are. Where is the support for those who wish to protect
something we have, against well-financed movements to change
it? Is only the man who wants to change something to be given
foundation support?

In Dr. Heald's public statements I have found much to be ad-
mired and applauded. If I am critical or questioning of some of
his remarks it is to bring into focus problems of foundation the-
ory and management which, I believe, sorely need attention and
discussion. In an address of April 4, 1957, for example, he
touches on the problem of foundation responsibility by saying
that “education extends beyond the academic world and into the
atmosphere of society, which is made up of beliefs and ambitions
of the aggregate of its members.” He follows with this statement:
“This is where foundations, among others, have an appropriate
role to play, not in the shaping of those beliefs and ambitions but
in helping to provide people concerned with them and compe-
tent to understand, maintain and realize them." Just what does
this mean? Is it possible to “provide” people competent to "real-
ize” “ambitions" without, in turn, being responsible for the con-
tents of what these people "maintain”? Can one intentionally deal

A NEW POLICY? 225

with change without being responsible for the change which one
finances?

If a foundation makes grants "to improve governmental proc-
esses,” how can it avoid entering the field of politics and partisan
action? What constitutes "improvement"? Such a term involves
value-concepts and, therefore, offers a problem not subject to so-
lution through a scientific method of approach free of precon-
ceived political concepts of value. So many foundation executives
seem to fail to see the determining influence of a priori assump-
tions of the "desirable," of the socially "commendable,” and of
similar yardsticks for judgment. For this reason they do not seem
to realize how much of what they do is political.

Here is an example. The spending of 63 million dollars to ad-
vance international understanding, desirable as this goal may ap-
pear, is the result of a priori assumptions regarding ethical and
practical values, ultimate purposes and potentials. There can be
no possible objection to the relief of the poor and sick, wherever
they may suffer. But the expenditure of 58 million dollars in
overseas development programs "to help the emerging new dem-
ocratic nations of the world to help themselves" cannot be sep-
arated from an inherent political intention — or from such a priori
assumptions as: that these nations are democratic; that their de-
mocracy, if they have it, is good for them; that the adoption of
some democratic processes necessarily results in the adoption of
democratic ideas of peace and justice; that immediate institution
of democracy in these undeveloped nations is good for mankind;
and that democracy is better nurtured if supported from the out-
side than if it stands upon its own feet. I do not mean to con-
jecture which, if any, of these assumptions are wrong, but to em-
phasize that they are a priori assumptions.

In an address on April 8, 1957, Dr. Heald, discussing the Re-
sponsibilities of Private Philanthropy, indicates an awareness that
the responsibility of foundations to the public goes beyond the
mere publication of reports. Foundation activities, he says, in-
volve "risk, and they require intelligence, judgment and wisdom.
Their ultimate success or failure forms the basis on which the

226 THE FORD FOUNDATION

foundations will be judged by the public they serve and which
gives them the freedom and the opportunity they enjoy.*' But
then Dr. Heald seems to fall into an error conventional to the
manager of the “concentration." He identifies the responsibilities
of a foundation in terms of the promotion of concepts of value.
He speaks of a foundation’s “freedom to discriminate, to take
chances, to try to identify the good and make it better." This
amounts not to a mere support of controversy but to an actual
taking of sides on controversial issues.

There is no general agreement on what is good for society. In
a democratic society the decision of what is good for it (what
is right and what is wrong in effect) is decided by a majority.
The injection of foundation power into the democratic process by
which the majority makes these value decisions creates an im-
balance interfering with the concept that public affairs should be
controlled by the free will of the people. The freedom referred to
by Dr. Heald implies belief in an intellectually aristocratic £Iite
of foundation managers with the right to influence our fate. Con-
sistently with this 61ite concept, he speaks of the opportunity and
responsibility “to pioneer ahead of public opinion, to do # * *
things that might not at the time they are done be approved by
popular vote, to be ahead but not too far ahead." Such a right to
be “ahead" of the people can be exercised by an individual if he
cares to exercise it. Whether such a right is attributable to a ju-
ridical person operating with public trust funds, is highly ques-
tionable. To pioneer ahead of public opinion means indulging
directly or indirectly in propaganda of a kind that is the sole
privilege of the citizen and not the right of a tax-exempt organiza-
tion.

I agree with Dr. Heald that “stimulating the development of
ideas" is a legitimate concern of foundations. But the development
function should be left to others. The foundation should confine
itself to giving competing forces a fair and equal chance. Only if
equal chance is given can free competition in the market place of
ideas take place.

Dr. Heald describes the Ford Foundation’s hope of serving our

A NEW POLICY? 227

society and thus advancing human welfare in general in this man-
ner: '‘First, to identify existing centers of excellence and con-
tribute to their continued improvement, and second, to help the
number of these centers increase.” In selecting these centers, the
Foundation expects to find “individuals, departments, organiza-
tions, or entire institutions whose curiosity in the realm of ideas
holds most promise — as far as this can be determined — for tomor-
row’s world.” This statement again suggests value judgments of
a political nature. It is a program which could only be accepted
as just and sound if equal chance were given to competing ideas
and to the respective representatives or defenders of these ideas.
I do not see how those in positions like Dr. Heald's can forget
that the tax-exemption privilege is granted by all the people, ir-
respective of their creeds, ideas, and political goals. How can
a foundation rightly exhibit partisan preferences at the expense
of that part of the public which does not support these pref-
erences! Tax exemption does not make foundations the guardians
of the nation in the world of ideas and in planning for the future.

“The Ford Foundation is interested in improving American
society,” says its president. He says that experiments and research
underwritten by the Foundation “may not be uniformly popular,
and probably should not be. Problems in the social sciences are
not problems of which everyone is aware or on whose easy solu-
tion everyone agrees. Yet it is part of the foundation function to
cruise ahead of popular notions, to risk being sniped at, when
there is a valid gain to be made.” This, it seems to me, is the
"social-engineering” concept gone wild. Is it not presumptuous of
foundation administrators to assume that their choice of values is
superior to that of others?

“Ye shall be as gods,” said the serpent in Paradise, in offer-
ing the forbidden fruit, “knowing good and evil.”

It is my own hope that Dr. Heald will take the time to challenge
conventional concepts of foundation management, such as I have
criticized above, and to think through on his own the difficult
problems involved. As the chief administrator of the largest tax-
exempt fund in our history, he owes this duty to the people.

228 THE FORD FOUNDATION

THE RECENT PAST

The Annual Report of The Ford Foundation for 1956, signed by
Mr. Gaither, contains the latest statements of the Foundation’s
policies. As I shall explain later, the Foundation started with five
major areas of proposed activity. It has now extended into twenty-
three major project areas. It continues its plan to set up successive,
new, self-contained funds under separate boards of management,
thus delegating its jurisdiction and trust functions to others. The
report makes much of the relinquishment of control of the Foun-
dation by the Ford family. This step might have been desirable
from several points of view, including the desirability of shifting
any onus of responsibility from the controlling proprietors of the
Ford Motor Company. But the shift from family control to a self-
perpetuating, bureaucratic control may not have been so com-
mendable. It took the risk of a characteristic breeding of power
cliques of administrators and the use of resources for political
ends instead of for charitable donations.

Having been given control of the Foundation, the trustees, says
Mr. Gaither, “accepted the challenge of the maturing concept of
American foundation philanthropy in which emphasis had shifted
over a period of some forty years from the effects of social prob-
lems to their causes . They agreed that the resources of the Foun-
dation should be committed to the solution of problems consti-
tuting grave threats or obstacles to human progress — such as the
growing demands on the educational structure and the need for
improved understanding of and between men and nations.” No
one could disagree with the desirability of solving the problems
which Mr* Gaither mentions. But solutions for such problems are
chiefly political, Foundations which take the initiative, the prop-
agandists leadership, for social change cease to be philanthropic
in the legal meaning of the term and enter into the political arena
where they do not belong.

The choice of measures to remove unfavorable causes in our
body social i$ clearly a political-partisan matter. So, in effect, is

THE RECENT PAST 229

the defining of what constitutes "progress.” Contrary to the belief
prevalent among some foundations, the currently foundation-
orthodox ideas about progress and the need for change are not
universally accepted. There is a noticeable and vehement revolt
among American thinkers who oppose materialistic concepts of
progress and pragmatic solutions of problems, basing their dis-
taste for them on religious or philosophical convictions,

A good illustration of this revolt is to be found in an address
delivered by Dr. Ralph Cooper Hutchinson, President of Lafa-
yette College, on March 21, 1957, under the auspices of the
Committee of Sponsors of the Greater Philadelphia Council of
Churches. In this address he inveighed against the assault of sci-
entific humanism on ideals. He named four teachings of scientific
humanism which constitute "particular dangers.” One is that "all
is natural and all truth is subject to discovery and determination
through science." "As a consequence," he said, "there is no higher
law, no law written in the heart, no law on the tables of stones, no
law revealed in the sublimities of nature, no law in the inner con-
science, no law of God.” He described the second danger: "as the
belief, following the lead of Bacon, Lenin, Hogben and Bernal,”
that "there are no values save material and scientific realities.”
The third danger lie says is that "the objective of all life” is
deemed to be "social progress," "Here," he continues, "is one of
the greatest values and greatest vices of scientific humanism, be-
cause of course social progress is good. The scientific humanist
has arbitrarily inherited and adopted the concept from the Chris-
tian ethic. But he makes it the supreme good and only goal. * * *
Social progress is the only norm, the only ideal, the only objective.
All other values are dismissed."

Since "social progress is the only value” to scientific humanism,
said Dr. Hutchinson in describing its fourth danger, "the end
justifies the means,” means which may be coercive and ignore
the rights of the individual. "All the developing power of science
is to be used to bring about the social progress desired. Hence
the use of laws to achieve social progress * * We are going

230 THE FORD FOUNDATION

along with these evils/' continued Dr. Hutchinson. “Inflamed by
the fad for social progress and reform, we have given up the
teaching of social idealism and have embarked on what we
call ‘liberal movements.’ We are achieving social progress by leg-
islation. Instead of persuading men we command them. * * * In
our moral judgments we have gone over into the enemies' ter-
ritory because while not denying God it is becoming very com-
mon to deny any higher law. * * * We have substituted an
opportunistic and relative ethic for the absolute. We are becoming
a compromising relativistic uncertain people recognizing no ab-
solute right or wrong, no higher law.”

Have any foundation administrators the moral and ethical right
to ignore the position of the great number of intelligent Americans
who think as does Dr. Hutchinson and to direct the trust funds
which these administrators disburse solely or predominantly to
those of the opposing point of view?

There is one hopeful sign in the broadening which the exten-
sion of The Ford Foundation’s original platform indicates; this
broadening at least exhibits some flexibility. We can only hope
that the Foundation will move further and further away from
the temptation to adjust our body politic to blueprints designed
by ideological and political factions. This is so important in the
case of The Ford Foundation because of its immense size. Its er-
rors can be huge errors, gigantic in impact. It has no peer in size
or potential. When The Ford Foundation takes sides, who can be
its match! How can there be a fair test of ideas!

The managers of the Foundation seem to have an exaggerated
sense of mission and importance. Without apparently realizing
how much it applies to his own foundation, Mr. Gaither quotes
Dr. Raymond B. Fosdick, former president of The Rockefeller
Foundation, as follows;

Every social agency, including a foundation, has within it
not only the seeds of possible decay but a tendency to exalt
the machinery of organization above the purposes for which
the organization is created.

THE RECENT PAST 23T

Mr. Gaither's belief that the Foundation should decide what so-
cial problems exist, endeavor to determine their causes, and find
measures to remedy them, expresses an excessus mandati .

Mr. Gaither deems the philanthropic process as “at best a
reasonable system of providing resources and opportunities for
men capable of creative thinking in what has been described as
a gigantic bet on the improvability of man” (emphasis supplied).
This is again tampering with law and with the body social* There
are responsible schools of thought which do not believe in the
“improvability" of man — and this includes the Christian religions.
What Mr. Gaither propounds as a brand of foundation philosophy
is the old Pelagian heresy of the fifth century, opposed by Augus-
tine and later by the Reformation. I do not profess the competence
to discuss whether man is "improvable" or not, but the massive
body of opinion against it would indicate that a foundation should
steer carefully clear of basing a disposition of its vast funds on
the support of the "improvability" theory. Of course, Mr. Gaither
may not have meant what he said. He may have meant merely
"the improvability of man’s conditions" or the "improvability of
man's education" or something like that. If that be so, a lesson is
apparent. Foundation managers should not try to be philosophers
or, at least, not attempt to select brands of philosophy upon which
to base the support of research. Such decisions are far too dan-
gerous for foundation managers to handle.

There are some encouraging features in Mr. Gaither's report,
He recognizes the responsibility of a foundation for the results of
its grants, at least to the extent of seeing the need of examination
and review. He says: "The Foundation retains a continuing re-
sponsibility to review and evaluate the grantees’ accomplishments
under the grant. If the Foundation should conclude that it has
fallen short of the objective, or that a grantee has exhibited poor
judgment in a series of events over a substantial period of time,
the Foundation has the inherent right — and indeed the obligation
— to withhold further support for such a grantee. * * * Thus the
responsibility for making judgments cannot be evaded by those
whose responsibility it is to administer the resources of philan-

232 THE FORD FOUNDATION

thropy.” I would hope that Mr. Gaither and others like him would
also come to the point of recognizing the social duty to take such
corrective or remedial action as may be possible when a project
has turned out badly or unfairly.

Encouraging, too, was the 1956 grant to Harvard, even though
in the small sum of $25,000, for "improving the understanding
of American capitali$m.,, How rarely, indeed, is such a grant to be
found among lists of major foundation benefactions. Grants for
change, yes. Grants to defend that capitalism upon which our na-
tion has grown strong, that capitalism which gave birth to The
Ford Foundation, that capitalism which has been under trip-
hammer attack by a multitude of foundation-supported intellec-
tuals, have been almost as rare as hens’ teeth.

One reported grant of $195,000 to Columbia University is more
difficult to understand, though it may indicate a friendlier attitude
toward business. It is for a study of the legal, business, and po-
litical problems of Joint International Business Ventures (such
as the oil consortium of Iran). Such studies could be well left to
the managements of the wealthy corporations involved in such
international deals.

Eminently discouraging in Mr. Gaither’s report is evidence of
the continued extensive use of intermediary organizations to dis-
burse the Foundation's money. Among these, prominently, are
The Social Science Research Council and the allegedly non-
partisan Foreign Policy Association now under the partisan presi-
dency of Vera Micheles Dean. Most astounding are the grants
to other foundations: for example, to The Russell Sage Founda-
tion, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and The
Whitney Foundation. The connections with other foundations are
so numerous there seems almost to be a mixture of management.

In the most important field of the behavioral sciences, for in-
stance, an Advisory Committee assists the Foundation in the se-
lection of recipient universities. Among the members of this Com-
mittee, in addition to the directors of the Foundation-financed
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, are
Charles Dollard of the Carnegie Endowment; Hans Speier of The

THE RECENT PAST 233

Rand Corporation; Donald Young of The Russell Sage Founda-
tion; and Fillmore Sandford of the American Psychological As-
sociation. Messrs. Dollard and Young are very familiar names.
They selected Stuart Chase to do The Proper Study of Mankind,
the exposition of the current social-science orthodoxy. Their names
appear, again and again, in foundation operations. Hans Speier,
before coming to this country and serving as a professor at the
New School for Social Research and later as director of the social-
studies section of the supersecret Rand Corporation, had con-
tributed extensively to radical Socialist publications, especially to
Rudolf Hilferding’s Die Gesellschaft , in Germany.

Here is another example. The Report describes a committee of
five which assists the Foundation in awarding grants-in-aid to
individual scholars. Of this committee of five, one is the same
Hans Speier; a second is the same Charles Dollard; a third is
the same Donald Young. On the very next page of the Report
appears the name of Professor Paul Lazarsfeld of Columbia, who
is reported to be engaged in directing the “improvement” of
“advanced training in social research.” He, too, is a standard
character, appearing again and again on the rolls of the founda-
tion-favored. Are our academies so bereft of scholarship that foun-
dations must use the same few technicians over and over againl

The sorry story of The Fund for the Republic, that strange
child of The Ford Foundation, has embarrassed its parent, which
has sought to shift responsibility by repeatedly affirming the com-
plete independence of The Fund. But there seem to be left vestiges
of the spirit which caused The Fund for the Republic to be
created. On page 42 of the Report is a picture of Joseph Welch,
who was selected to appear on a television program to expound
on the “Constitution’s protection of individual civil liberties.” Mr.
Welch is a lawyer who came into national prominence as the op-
ponent of the late Senator McCarthy. There is a definite con-
troversy associated with the term “civil liberties,” a controversy
in which Mr. Welch took a fervent side. However excellent a law-
yer he may be, to have selected him to discuss “civil liberties”
was an exercise of political partisanship.

234 THE FORD FOUNDATION

Similarly, on page 36 of the 1956 Ford Foundation Report,
appears a picture of Professor Zechariah Chafee of Harvard, con-
ducting a “regular TV course on human rights/* Professor Chafee
was an eminent and very articulate partisan in the controversy
over “civil liberties/* “human rights/’ and the Fifth Amendment.
He was also an endorser of many pro-Communist causes. In
his speeches and writings he supported and expounded the same
position taken by Dr. Hutchins and by the propaganda of The
Fund for the Republic. Grave issues are involved, including
the extent to which the doctrine of States’ Rights applies to re-
strict Federal action; the relative importance and leverage of the
various individual liberties granted by the Constitution and the
Amendments; the significance of the Constitutional reservation of
unenumerated basic rights to the people; the proper powers of
Congressional committees; the significance and proper use of the
Fifth Amendment; the propriety and legality of methods used to
fight communism; and others. On these issues, The Ford Foun-
dation has enlisted its enormous power on one side. How was the
other side represented? It was not represented. One can only con-
clude that it was the intention and purpose of The Ford Founda-
tion to propagandize for one side of these grave issues. Such a
taking of sides by a foundation must surely be condemned bit-
terly. In the case of The Ford Foundation, its Gargantuan size
makes its violation of propriety (and perhaps of law) all the more
serious.

It would be interesting to make a thorough study of the recip-
ients of funds for research and the specific projects for which
Ford Foundation funds were expended. There seems not the
slightest doubt that it would disclose a relatively limited circle
of institutions/their academicians, and their graduate students.
Familiar names appear and reappear. Samuel Stouffer of Harvard
receives a grant with no strings attached. So does Marie Jahoda
of New York University (former wife of Professor Paul Lazars-
feld). With Mr. Speier on the awarding committee, we find
two of his Rand Corporation staff members, Messrs. Goldhamer
and Leites, similarly benefited. And so it goes.

THE RECENT PAST 235

In the field of research and education a foundation docs not
seem to me to have any right to discriminate and to favor cer*
tain groups and individuals. Its funds are in use through the grace
of all the people. To exclude individuals or institutions because of
their philosophies or religious persuasions seems indefensible.
One form of discrimination is most difficult to understand. There
are 30 million Catholics in this country, who maintain scores of
universities and colleges. Their institutions do not figure among
the favored of the foundation complex, nor are academicians
connected with them likely to receive research grants from the
complex. Perhaps there is a good reason for this discrimination.
If so, I cannot guess what it might be. True, Catholic institutions
were included among the institutional donees to which The Ford
Foundation recently donated a huge aggregate of money, a step
which deserved the most enthusiastic approval of the general pub-
lic. But when it comes to special, individual grants, to find a
Catholic institution as a donee is a rarity indeed.

The massive Ford grants to institutions, hospitals, colleges, and
medical schools was a very hopeful sign that there might at least
be dissension within The Ford Foundation, a conflict between
the old school of thought and the new which favors a nonpolitical
and constructive use of its funds. The earlier history of the Foun-
dation, especially in the era of Messrs. Paul Hoffman and Robert
M. Hutchins, was, to say the least, controversial. The first ap-
pointments to the Foundation staff after the 1949 platform was
adopted were influenced by these two proponents of radicalism in
public affairs. It may take years before this influence, inherited
by the new management, can be overcome. It can hardly be over-
come unless The Ford Foundation decides to avoid joint ventures
with other foundations, to eliminate trustees, executives, and ad-
visers now or recently connected with other foundations or dis-
tributing organizations — all this in the interests of trying to effect
an unhampered and free contest of ideas.

236 THE FORD FOUNDATION

THE EARLIER HISTORY OF THE FORD FOUNDATION

After an initial period, during which the foundation had no defi-
nite policies to govern its grants, a designed program was adopted,
upon recommendation of a special committee. This committee was
headed by W. Rowan Gaither, Jr., who later became president of
the foundation. Mr. Gaither has said that Mr. Ford wanted to
know what the people of the United States thought the foundation
should use its money for and, accordingly, went out to see “the
people/’ But “the people” turned out to be a large number of “ex-
perts” of various kinds — who thought they ought to be able to say
what was good for “the people.”

The result was a 139-page book, which can be obtained from
The Ford Foundation. Its major thesis was that the Ford Founda-
tion should try to help solve the problems of mankind and to do
so in five areas:

The Establishment of Peace.

The Strengthening of Democracy.

The Strengthening of the Economy.

Education in a Democratic Society.

Individual Behavior and Human Relations.

Raymond Moley pointed out that the committee which had de-
signed this program was

composed of a lawyer, W. Rowan Gaither, Jr., now president
of the foundation; a doctor; a school administrator; and
five professors. None of these were experienced in founda-
tion work. It could hardly be a coincidence that the five
“areas” which they recommended for the foundation cor-
respond, to a degree, to the academic departments in which
the professors had been teaching.

The plan substantially ruled out medical research, public
health, and natural science on the vague ground that
“progress toward democratic goals are today social rather
than physical.” “Democratic goals” are nowhere defined.*

• Newsweek, January 9, 1956,

EARLIER HISTORY OF FORD FOUNDATION 237

Nevertheless, no one could quarrel with the selection of the five
fields of activity, vague as they might be, if the plan were to make
only direct and simple grants to desirable Institutions and individ-
uals. A grant to Harvard University for so vague a purpose as to
"help strengthen democracy" or one to Columbia for "studies in
group psychology" could result in nothing but applause, so long
as these institutions were to be permitted to determine for them-
selves how the grants were to be applied. But this was not the
Ford Foundation plan. The foundation was to spend most of its
efforts in the detailed designing of how its selected purposes were
to be achieved.

Whether it was because an overwhelming number of the con-
sulted "experts" were "liberals," or because the initial directive
management of the foundation was "liberal" and sought "liberal"
justification for a "liberal" program, at any rate The Ford Founda-
tion became a conscious "liberal" vehicle.

(1 must here remind the reader of my definition of the term "lib-
eral" as I use it throughout this book. I do not mean a liberal in
the traditional sense; the "liberal" to whom I refer is almost the
diametric opposite of the classic liberal, who is devoted to per-
sonal freedom. The "liberal" to whom I refer is, at the very least,
tinged with Marxism, Fabianism, or some other variety of eco-
nomic collectivism and political centralization. He is a "statist," an
advocate of highly centralized government, of "state planning," of
paternalism. His direction is away from personal and group man-
agement of affairs and toward government management.)

An eminent "liberal," Mr. Paul Hoffman, was selected as chief
administrator of The Ford Foundation. His political predilections
were well known when he was appointed chairman and have be-
come more evident since. For one of his chief assistants, he se-
lected Dr, Robert Maynard Hutchins, a "liberal" educator and
publicist whose ideas are even more extreme than Mr. Hoffman’s.
The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial; "Money spent in the
clouds is money frittered away," And further; "The task of dis-
bursing millions of dollars for so nebulous a goal as ‘the welfare of
the people' is a formidable one; the very magnitude and vague-

238 THE FORD FOUNDATION

ness of the goal make it difficult to grapple with on a practical
level.”* The difficult task was handed over to Mr. Hoffman, who
relied heavily on Dr. Hutchins.

Not only these two were “liberals.” The major staff members,
the men who were to do the principal thinking for the trustees,
were almost all “liberals.” One cannot believe that this selection
was coincidental. These men do not represent a cross-section of
American belief. Their selection was not even a case of choosing
a “liberal” majority. There were virtually no conservatives on the
staff. Dwight Macdonald described the typical Ford Foundation
staff member as “youngish” and “of a liberal turn politically, habit-
uated to collective, nonprofit enterprise. . . f

As might be expected, the academic advisers who were called
in, from time to time, both to advise on, and in many instances to
direct, studies or projects, were again overwhelmingly “liberals.”
There are, in the United States, many academicians of eminence
who are either wholly objective politically or who have a conserva-
tive cast of mind. You might be able to find one of these asso-
ciated with Ford Foundation projects if you look long and care-
fully; but you will find him, if at all, hidden behind a mass of
dedicated “liberals.”

Thus, the largest foundation ever created became a vehicle for
the type of planning which is dear to the hearts of the “liberal.”
Its chief executives were “liberals,” its staff was overwhelmingly, if
not wholly, “liberal,” and its advisers were selected almost en-
tirely from the “liberal” group.

It would have been possible, to be sure, even with such heavily
slanted foundation personnel, to keep on an objective course;
strength of purpose, application, and alertness on the part of its
trustees could have done so. In the case of The Ford Foundation,
however, this did not happen. Mr. Hoffman and Dr. Hutchins were
eventually released, after Mr. Henry Ford II and some of the
other trustees could stand their activities no longer. In the mean-
time, great damage had been done with the vast financial power

• December 14, 1955.

•f The Ford Foundation, p. 98.

EARLIER HISTORY OF FORD FOUNDATION 239

which the foundation administered. Nor can we be certain that
the trustees, having rid themselves of Mr. Hodman and Dr.
Hutchins, are ready to purge the foundation of its strongly “lib-
eral” elements or are even acutely conscious of the social neces-
sity of operating this great public trust with an objective staff.

I wish to make clear, at this point, that I do not take the position
that a foundation must be “conservative” or have a predominance
of “conservative” employees or even of any particular percentage
of “conservatives.” But I do criticize The Ford Foundation for
having allowed itself to acquire a distinctly, consciously “liberal”
character. I maintain that a tax-exempt trust, such as a foundation,
should be wholly objective politically and economically — better
still, should avoid, as much as possible, injecting itself into areas
or projects which are susceptible of being directed by political-
minded foundation executions toward propagandistic ends, or in
which political opinion may play a directive part.

It has not been uncommon in the United States for a founda-
tion theoretically managed by predominantly conservative trus-
tees to be taken over in operation by a “liberal” group and di-
rected largely by it to political ends. In the case of The Ford
Foundation, this process was made very easy through the plan of
detailed operation which the trustees permitted themselves to be
persuaded to adopt. Under this plan, and it was made utterly
clear, the trustees were not to interfere with the staff.

The Report of the Study for the Ford Foundation on Policy and
Program, dated November 19, 1949, reads in part as follows:

Individual members of the Board of Trustees should not
seek to decide the technical questions involved in particular
applications and projects. Nothing would more certainly
destroy the effectiveness of the foundation. On the con-
trary, the Trustees will be most surely able to control the
main lines of policy of the Foundation, and the contribu-
tion it will make to human welfare, if they give the Presi-
dent and the officers considerable freedom in developing
the program, while they avoid influencing (even by in-

240 THE FORD FOUNDATION

direction) the conduct of projects to which the Foundation
has granted funds. (Pages 137 and 128.)

As individuals, the Trustees should learn as much as they
can by all means possible, formal and informal, about the
program of the Foundation in relation to the affairs of the
world. But the Board of Trustees, as a responsible body,
should act only according to its regular formal procedures,
and usually on the agenda, the dockets, and the recommen-
dations presented by the President, (Page 128.)

The meetings of the Board should be arranged so that the
discussion will not be directed mainly at the individual
grants recommended by the officers, and institutions to re-
ceive them. Nothing could destroy the effectiveness of the
Board more certainly than to have the agenda for its meet-
ings consist exclusively of small appropriation items, each
of which has to be judged on the basis of scientific con-
siderations, the academic reputation of research workers, or
the standing of institutions. If the agenda calls solely for
such discussions the Board will necessarily fail to discuss
the main issues of policy and will inevitably interfere in
matters in which it has no special competence. (Page 130.)
A foundation may wish from time to time to make small
grants, either to explore the possibilities of larger programs,
or to take advantage of an isolated and unusual opportun-
ity. For such purposes it will be useful for the Trustees to set
up (and replenish from time to time) a discretionary fund
out of which the President may make grants on his own
authority. The Trustees should set a limit on the aggregate
amount which the President may award in discretionary
grants during a given period, rather than set a fixed limit
on the size of a single grant. * * *

The President of the Ford Foundation, as its principal officer,
should not only serve as a member of the Board of Trustees,
but should be given full authority to administer its organ-
ization.

He should have full responsibility for presenting recoin-

EARLIER HISTORY OF FORD FOUNDATION 241

mendations on program to the Board, and full authority
to appoint and remove all other officers and employees of
the Foundation. * * * (Page 132.)

The founders of at least two of the larger American foun-
dations intended their trustees to devote a major amount
of their time to the active conduct of foundation affairs.
Usually this arrangement has not proved practicable. * * #
(Page 133.)

* * # for the program of a foundation may be determined
more certainly by the selection of its top officers than by
any statement of policy or any set of directions. * * *

The Reece Committee report commented on this platform as
follows:

We cannot escape the conclusion that the trustees of the
Ford Foundation abdicated their trust responsibility in
assenting to this plan of operation, under which everything
except possibly the establishment of glittering generalities
could be left to employees .*

In his book The Ford Foundation, Dwight Macdonald points
out how vexatious a job it is to run a large foundation/}- Massive,
boring detail is required of those who would expend vast sums on
directed research.

Like an army, the United Nations, and other large, bureau-
cratic organizations, a foundation excretes an extraordinary
quantity of words, most of them of stupefying dullness. J

Is it the trustees who plough through this material? No, replies
Mr. Macdonald. In the case of the Ford Foundation:

•p.26.

j-Mr. Macdonald, incidentally, is no friend of the Reece Committee. His book
completely ignores the mass of critical material produced by it and writes off
its work with some highly uncomplimentary characterizations. However, he
implicitly supports many of the most important criticisms of foundation op*
eralion made by the Reece Committee and actually adds valuable illustrative
material to the data critical of foundations and of The Ford Foundation in
particular.

$ The Ford Foundation, p. 105.

242 THE FORD FOUNDATION

The Foundation’s fourteen trustees, prominent and busy
men of affairs, are shielded by the staff from the main spate
of bureaucratic rhetoric.*

That is, while the trustees are, no doubt, confronted periodi-
cally with a certain number of reports presented by their profes-
sional employees — and these reports, in themselves, are difficult
enough fully to understand — they do not even see the mass of ma-
terial which the staff uses in deciding upon programs, plans, proj-
ects, and grantees. The trustees know only in a general way what
is going on. They act only upon what has been filtered up to them
from the echelons below. They exercise little more than superficial
direction of the foundation's affairs, in relation to directed or de-
signed projects.

After all, what can be expected of a trustee unfamiliar with the
gobbledygook which is the lingua franca of the professional foun-
dation administrator? The tendency of many foundation execu-
tives to avoid writing simply, can be attributed, I am sure, to a
certain aping of the social scientists with whom they come into con-
tact and whose obscure writings they so frequently see. Many of
these “scientists” have what Professor Sorokin in his recent book,
Fads and Foibles in Modem Sociology and Related Sciences , calls
’’speech disorders.” One of these speech disorders, he says, is
“a ponderously obscure description of platitudes.” In an effort to
make their ’’sciences” sound more “scientific,” they take over terms
which have precise meaning in a natural science and implant
them in their own work. Professor Sorokin mentions some of these
terms (and others constructed out of whole cloth): syntality,
synergy , ergic, metanergic , valence , cathexis , inductibility , topo-
logical medium, hodological space, edieyice , abience, enlhropy,
org, animorg . He illustrates the resulting nonsense by describing
certain historical incidents as a social scientist with this speech
disorder might do it:

* * * in March 1917 the location of Russia locomoted on
a two-dimensional plane (surface) from monarchy to re-

• Ibid., p. no.

EARLIER HISTORY OF FORD FOUNDATION 243

public, with positive cathexis and promotive inductibility
of the Provisional government vectorized toward the goal
of a democratic regime. In October 1917 this locomotion
was followed by a new locomotion in hodological space,
fluid and permeable, along the dimensions of Communism,
marked by negative cathexis, and contrient inductibility
toward a democratic structure of "groupness,” “we-ness,”
"valence,” and "syntality.” #

Mr. Macdonald gives some actual examples of this foundation
language, which no trustee could be expected to understand with-
out an interpreter at his elbow. Take this one relating to a pro-
posed study of the experience of foreign students in the United
States:

The general purpose is to develop techniques for evaluating
the impact of exchange-of-persons experiences on foreign
students in order to produce, through intensive, controlled
investigation, a body of information on the effect of ex-
change that can serve as a basis for a wider analysis of
the many variable factors in particular exchanges.

Mr. Macdonald explains this as meaning that The Social Sci-
ence Research Council (in this instance) is to spend $225,000
(provided by the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations)
on a study which will make it possible to do more studies.

Mr. Macdonald quotes further from an SSRC report on this
Ford-supported proposed study:

The first phase had consisted of intensive exploratory stud-
ies of the adjustment of foreign students to life on Amer-
ican campuses * * *. As was hoped these studies focussed the
attention of the committee on a number of problems of
salient theoretical and practical interests, and resulted in
the formulation of many hypotheses about the determi-
nants of various outcomes of the students’ sojourn. As is
generally the case with intensive studies, however, the data

# See pp. 21-50.

244 THE FORD FOUNDATION

served to document varieties of cross-cultural experience
rather than to support firm conclusions about causes and
effects. The committee early decided, therefore, that the
next phase of its work would be devoted to well-focussed,
systematic studies designed to test hypotheses and attack
major problems discerned in the initial phase of its re*
search.*

Mr. Macdonald translates these sonorous phrases to mean: they
were disappointed in the work which had been done; they did not
find out anything; they were starting all over again. Mr. Mac*
donald comments: "The American academic world, thanks partly
to the foundations, is becoming a place where committees ac*
cumulate and thought decays.”

Into this complex and difficult world the trustees of The Ford
Foundation have thrust themselves. Able as they are, they could
quite possibly acquire enough information and data to steer them-
selves through it with sufficient understanding. But to accomplish
this would be a full-time job and a very arduous one.

It has been reported that the Ford Foundation trustees meet for
two days, four times a year; that they do some homework; that
they have informal talks with Mr. Gaither occasionally; and that
they act on committees from time to time. This would be enough if
the foundation merely made grants of the type which recently
won such great acclaim — direct grants to operating institutions for
simple and valuable uses. However, because The Ford Founda-
tion operates in obscure and difficult areas of activity and devotes
itself largely, if not principally, to designing and directing proj-
ects, the trustees could not possibly do their work adequately by
devoting, as they do, only one twelfth of every year to the job,

Mr. Henry Ford II is the most important member of the Ford
Foundation board. How much time does he spend on its work? He
has been quoted as saying: "I rarely take a position on any pro-
gram until the staff has acted on it." His main job is that of chief
executive of the Ford Motor Company, a rather large enterprise to

• The ford Foundation, pp. 105-10$,

EARLIER HISTORY OF FORD FOUNDATION 245

conduct. He has rightly said: "If I got mixed up in all thatM
(meaning the detailed work of The Ford Foundation) "I'd never
get anything done around here" (meaning the Ford Motor Com-
pany).*

Mr. Ford and the other trustees of The Ford Foundation "run"
it in the sense that they are the legal repositories of the manage-
ment power. They "run” it also in the sense that they exercise the
right to approve or reject major proposals. They do not "run" it,
however, in the* practical sense; they delegate their power to oth-
ers. Even if they were to apply their full time to the work, it
would be difficult for them to acquire a sufficient understanding of
the vast areas in which the foundation operates to enable them to
check the work of their employees. Spending the equivalent of one
month per year in the foundation’s service, they are dependent on
what these employees plan, approve, and execute,

Foundation apologists have tried to draw an analogy with an
industrial corporation, holding that the foundation trustee is in
the same position as the director of a commercial enterprise. The
analogy is not apt. The foundation trustee cannot discharge his
duty through the limited type of service which his directorship in
a commercial company involves, The ultimate, basic purpose of
the trust enterprise which he is to help direct is the selection of
grants and grantees. He is, in the true sense, a trustee. His funda-
mental, essential trust function is to select grants and grantees
with understanding, intelligence, and objectivity.

Trustee alertness is sorely necessary, because political slants are
so easily introduced into social material. The Reece Committee re-
port extracted an excellent example out of the 1952 report of The
Ford Foundation. The trustees who passed that report must have
done so in ignorance, for it contained this false statement:

The high cost of a college and of a higher education in
general makes real equality of opportunity impossible. More

* Mr. Ford made these statements while chairman of the Ford Foundation
board of trustees. Since then, he has retired as chairman, while remaining a
trustee. It is to be presumed that he will be able to give no more time to his
position as a trustee than he was able to give t 9 that pf chairman*

246 THE FORD FOUNDATION

and more the financial burden is being thrust upon the
student in the form of higher tuition fees. In consequence ,
higher education threatens to become increasingly the pre-
rogative of the well-to-do*

The fact is exactly the opposite. “More and more,“ the less well-
to-do are getting college educations. Here are the statistics on col-
lege attendance:

Year Students enrolled (by thousands)

1900 238

And the increase since 1950 has been so great that the colleges are
swamped; their facilities are far below the demand. As the Reece
Committee report asked:

Why did representatives of The Ford Foundation, who were
well aware of the true facts, make such false statements:
Did they intend political propaganda? Did they wish to manu-
facture a class argument, an attack on the well-to-do who
alone are able (which is false) to attend colleges! j*

The predominance of “liberal0 direction of The Ford Founda-
tion's affairs — the overwhelming predominance of the leftward-
tending point of view among its professional staff — makes it all the
more dangerous for the trustees to delegate their basic duties.
That this leftish predominance has been translated into founda-
tion action appeared clearly from the limited studies which the
Reece Committee was able to undertake and from further data
which have appeared since its work closed. A complete Congres-
sional study of the operations of The Ford Foundation, to audit

• Reece Committee Report, p. 123. Emphasis supplied,
j- Loc. cit .

1910

1920

*93°

1940

1950

355

598

1,101

1.494

2.659

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES FUND 247

the discharge of the trustees of their duties to the people of the
United States, should be made.

Let us see some of the record to date.

THE (FORD) BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES FUND

The Reece Committee’s report included a diagram of the structure
of The Ford Foundation and its subsidiaries. This gigantic opera-
tion has grown so complex that it is no wonder the central trustees
cannot possibly follow all its operations, The diagram shows, as
major divisions;

Adult Education
Advancement of Education
East European Fund
Intercultural Publications
Resources for the Future
Fund for the Republic
Center for Advanced Study
TV Workshop
Foundation External Grant
Behavioral Sciences Division

Research & Training Abroad „

Institutional Exchange Program
Grants in Aid

The 1956 Report (p. 17) diagrams a still longer list of divi-
sional activities;

%

International affairs
International training and research
Overseas development
International legal studies
Public affairs
Fund for the Republic
Economic affairs
Resources for the Future
Business administration

248 THE FORD FOUNDATION

Behavioral sciences
Center for Advanced Studies
Mental health research
Fund for Adult Education
Medical education
Hospital aid

Council on Library Resources
National Merit Scholarships
Faculty salaries
Humanities
Education

r

Educational television

Fund for Advancement of Education

TV-Radio Workshop

And more may be breeding.

Particularly important is the Behavioral Sciences Fund, en-
gaged in a field of operations in which, if it fails to act with the
utmost objectivity, it can cause irremediable damage. The Reece
Committee report commented upon it as follows:

This Behavioral Sciences Fund has vast resources at its
command. Its list of objectives indicates an underlying
assumption that human behavior can be understood as an
object of the natural sciences would be, within the frame-
work of limited numbers of cause^effect relationships.
This doctrine is not by any means universally accepted,
and there is the danger that the huge sum available to the
Fund to promote its underlying thesis can make this the
ruling doctrine in the social sciences. A full examination
of the current and intended operation of this great fund
is indicated, as well as a study of why certain institutions
have been so greatly favored by it.*

t

• Reece Committee Report, p. 82. The behavioral-”science” theories which
this Ford unit promotes with tens of millions of dollars largely concern
''scientism” or "fraudulent science.” The basic fallacy consists of an over-
emphasis on fact finding, with an accompanying insufficient regard for the
intangible factors which affect human behavior or must be taken into account

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES FUND 24?

The reference in the quotation above to “greatly favored" in-
stitutions is based partly upon the following statistical analysis:

A glance at the list of recent recipients of favor from, and
consultants to, the Behavioral Sciences Division of The Ford
Foundation indicates a definite concentration among favored
institutions or their faculties. Of the committees which
formulated policies for this Fund, including a total of 88
persons with university connections, 10 seem to have been
from Harvard; 8 from Chicago; 7 from Yale; 5 from Califor-
nia; 5 from Stanford; and 5 from Columbia. A total of
59 of these men (out of 88) represented 12, institutions.
There is additional significance in the fact that some of
these recipients and consultants were on a multiplicity of
committees. For example, Professor Lazarsfeld of Columbia,
was on six; Professors Carroll of North Carolina, Merton of
Columbia, and Tyler of Chicago, on five; Professors Lass-
well of Yale, Simon of Carnegie Tech., and Stouffer of
Harvard, on four, etc. Counting the number of times each
person with a university connection appears on committees
of the Fund, we reach this representation:

University of Chicago .

. » . 23

Harvard

... 18

Columbia

... 16

Yale

... 13

North Carolina ....

... 8

California .....

... 7

Stanford

... 7

Cornell

... 7

Note also that associates of The Rand Corporation are
represented 11 times. This interlock with The Rand Cor-
poration is highly interesting.

in determining what human beings should do, should be permitted to do,
or should be restrained from doing. I shall give an example of this, presently,
in discussing the notorious Behavioral Sciences Division-financed jury-tap-
ping incident.

250 THE FORD FOUNDATION

We must add the intriguing fact that the Behavioral Sci-
ences Fund provided a grant-in-aid program under which
each of fifty persons was to receive $5,000 to be spent at
their own discretion for the purpose of enriching their own
work. The associates and consultants distributed this largess,
and included a goodly number of themselves in their lists.

Note also that The Social Science Research Council # took
part in the policy making of the Fund and that considerable
funds were made available to it and through it.

In the Summer of 1950, $300,000 was given to each of seven
universities and to The Social Science Research Council
(beyond other large grants to the SSRC). Why this money
was concentrated on this limited group of institutions, we
do not know.f

The explanation, namely, that what seems to be favoritism is
really the selection of the best men in the respective fields of re-
search, is not persuasive. An analysis would show that the men
chosen, directly or through the use of selected universities, are
overwhelmingly, if not wholly, of one school — that which the Be-
havioral Sciences Division of The Ford Foundation seeks to pro-
mote. There is no objectivity in these selections. Men and institu-
tions are carefully chosen to follow the theories of social-science
research to which those who operate the Division adhere.

FORD EAVESDROPS ON JURIES

Were the trustees of The Ford Foundation to confine themselves
to direct, undesigned grants to operating institutions, they would
be held exonerated if anything unfortunate were done with a
grant. Where, however, the foundation has planned or designed
the grant, or played any part in determining or approving its de-
tailed subject matter, its objectives, or its method of operation, it is

• See Chapter 3 to orient The Social Science Research Council,
f Reece Committee Report , p. 81.

FORD EAVESDROPS ON JURIES 251

difficult for the trustees to escape responsibility for what happens.
The incident of jury eavesdropping is illustrative.

It is also an example, an excellent one, of the fraudulent nature
of much of the "science” to which the Behavioral Sciences Divi-
sion had been addicted.

The Eastland Committee of the Senate recently investigated the
installation of microphones in jury rooms to record the conversa-
tions of juries in session. These installations were made under a
Ford Foundation grant through its Behavioral Sciences Division
to the University of Chicago Law School. The project was super-
vised by Dean Edward H. Levi of the Chicago University Law
School and was under the direction of Professor Harry Kalven, Jr.

These were scarcely objective selections to control an investiga-
tion with political overtones or connotations. Dean Levi signed a
letter to the Chicago Daily News in 1948 denouncing the House
Committee on Un-American Activities as a "spy-hunting” group.
Professor Kalvcn’s similar political disposition is indicated by his
letter to President Truman in 1952 asking clemency for the con-
victed Rosenberg spies and by his work at "Rosenberg rallies.”
Both these men belong to the group which J. Edgar Hoover has
characterized as "fictitious liberals.” They are entitled to their opin-
ions. But their opinions would seem to show such a lack of objec-
tivity that one would hardly choose them to study a political in-
stitution such as the jury system.

Dean Levi testified that The Ford Foundation originally did
not know that juries were to be "tapped” in the investigation
which he supervised. On the other hand, it appeared that the orig-
inal Ford grant had been for $400,000, but, so the dean testified,
it had been increased by an additional $1,000,000 after The Ford
Foundation had been informed of the eavesdropping procedure.

This was "behavioral science ”

This was paid for by The Ford Foundation with money dedi-
cated to the public.

Millions of Americans were shocked at the disclosure of this
project. As the Boston Post put it: "The jury system is far from per-

252 THE FORD FOUNDATION

feet, but it is not going to be improved by secret eavesdropping in
jury rooms. That kind of police-state research can only tear down
the confidence of the people in the jury system, and, by the same
method, destroy the courts.*’

The project was designed to be “scientific** and to be under-
taken under the auspices of “£lite** personnel who presume to
know far better than the citizen what is good for him. The people
saw the incident clearly, however, as a shocking violation of the
right of privacy without which the jury system would be useless as
one of the fundamental, Constitution-guaranteed protections of
the citizen,*

In a commercial corporation, a fiasco such as the jury-tapping
incident would mean that executive heads would fall. In The
Ford Foundation this does not seem to be the case. Bernard
Berelson, an old friend of Dr. Hutchins, was the operating head
of the Behavioral Sciences Division and seems to have been the
contact man for the project which eavesdropped on juries. As I
write, Mr. Berelson is still head of this great Behavioral Sciences
fund.

College presidents and academicians who so urgently (but
mostly in private) plead for direct and unrestricted grants to
academic institutions freely admit that these institutions them-
selves can err. It is quite possible that the Chicago Law School,
under Dean Levi’s deanship, would have itself selected the Ameri-
can jury as a subject of inquiry and conducted it with as little re-
gard to propriety. But there is normally far greater safety to the
public in transferring research decisions to recognized educa-
tional institutions than in bestowing them on professional founda-
tion managers.

There is the point, moreover, that such a grant could have been
made to some other law school presided over by a dean more

likely to direct a proper inquiry.

Among the countless condemnatory comments in the press

♦ I do not happen to know what other procedures of investigation the jury
project has adopted. But researchers who would stoop to the outrageous and
fruitless procedure of “bugging" juries in session may well have used other
and worse methods in their “scientific" research.

FUND FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION 253

which greeted the disclosure of the study of the ‘'behaviorism" of
juries by "bugging" their deliberations, was an editorial in The
Wall Street Journal of October 17, 1955, reading in part as fol-
lows:

When the experimenters use the wrong methods to ascertain
truth, are the researchers alone responsible? Or are the
foundations, which are tax-free, accountable to the public
for the transgressions?

# * #

Certainly the general public will hold foundations respon-
sible for grants used in irresponsible ways. And unless the
foundations themselves assume a responsibility for seeing
that their grants are not misused, the unfortunate result
doubtless will be that the government will assume it for
them.

For a foundation can no more disclaim responsibility where
legal research funds are used for tampering with the jury
system than it could if some irresponsible people used its
funds for research into structural engineering by blowing
up some public bridges.

THE (FORD) FUND FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION

It took courage for academicians to testify before the Recce Com-
mittee. To offer any criticism of the major foundations and those
organizations with which they interlock is equivalent to writing
yourself off their books. They know how to deal with those who
dare to disagree. As Professor Charles W. Briggs, professor emer-
itus of Columbia University, testified, they have terrified many
who would be critical. He said:

It is tragic in a high degree that men who have won con-
fidence and position in the education world should be
intimidated from expressing criticism of a foundation whose
administrators and policies they do not respect.*

♦ Reece Committee Report , p. 38,

254 THE FORD FOUNDATION

He added these remarks concerning the power of the founda-
tions to punish criticism or to suppress it by the inducements of
their patronage:

It has been stated that, unlike colleges and universities,
foundations have no alumni to defend them. But they do
have influential people as members of their boards, and
these members have powerful friends, some of whom are
more inclined to be partisanly defensive than objectively
critical. Moreover, there are also thousands who, hopeful
of becoming beneficiaries of future grants, either conceal
their criticisms or else give expression to a defense that may
not be wholly sincere.*

Dr. Briggs was one of the courageous few who were willing to
criticize when he thought criticism was due. His standing as one
of our leading educators was recognized by the Ford Foundation-
created Fund for the Advancement of Education, which had ap-
pointed him to its advisory committee.

It was with reference to The Fund for the Advancement of
Education, that heavily endowed child of The Ford Foundation,
that Professor Briggs principally testified. He had resigned from
its advisory committee in disgust. Reading from his own carefully
prepared statement, he said that all the officers of The (Ford)
Fund for the Advancement of Education had been appointed di-
rectly or indirectly by one influential executive of the parent
(Ford) foundation and (it is worth repeating) that these officers
presented to the board of their organization and to the public “a
program so general as to get approval and yet so indefinite as to
permit activities which in the judgment of competent critics are
either wasteful or harmful to the education program which has
been approved by the public/'

The Fund program was described in the statement of The Ford
Foundation, filed with the committee, as follows;

The Fund for the Advancement of Education concentrates
upon five major educational objectives. These are —

• Loc. tit.

FUND FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION 2 55

Clarifying the function of the various parts of the ed-
ucational system so that they can work together more ef-
fectively;

Improving the preparation of teachers at all levels of
the education system;

Improving curricula;

Developing increased financial support for educational
institutions; and

Equalizing educational opportunity.*

The same statement records that, up to the end of 1953, the
Fund had received from The Ford Foundation a total of $30,-
850,580, of which it had disbursed $22,242,568. By the end of
1954, it had received $57,000,000 from its parent. Who allocated
these vast funds? Professor Briggs tells us;

Not a single member of the staff, from the president down
to the lowliest employee, has had any experience, certainly
none in recent years, that would give understanding of the
problems that are met daily by the teachers and admin-
istrators of our schools,

Nor did they listen to competent advice:

As a former member of a so-called Advisory Committee I
testify that at no time did the administration of the fund
seek from it any advice on principles of operation nor did
it hospitably receive or act in accordance with such advice
as was volunteered.f

Professor Briggs attacked the theory that foundation leaders
were entitled to force upon the public things which it does not
want. lie said:

The principle that the public should decide what it wants
in order to promote its own welfare and happiness is un-
questionably sound. An assumption that the public does not

• Reece Committee Hearings, p. 1028.
t Reece Committee Report , p. 23.

256 THE FORD FOUNDATION

know what is for its own good is simply contrary to the
fundamental principles of democracy.*

Among his charges, supported in detail in his carefully pre-
pared statement,! Professor Briggs said that The (Ford) Fund for
the Advancement of Education “is improperly manned” with an
inexperienced staff “out of sympathy with the democratic ideal of
giving an appropriate education to all the children of all the peo-
ple”; that it has propagandized against programs approved by the
public; that it has ignored professional teachers* organizations;
that it has been extremely wasteful of public trust funds; that it has
"given no evidence of its realization of its obligations as a public
trust to promote the general good of the entire nation; and that it
either "has no balanced program of correlated constructive poli-
cies, or else it has failed to make them public.”

Having severely criticized the propaganda of The Ford Foun-
dation against current theories of education, he accused the Fund’s
officers of an “arrogation” of "an assumption of omniscience” and
said:

All this being understood, we can assert without fear of
successful contradiction that any attempt by outside agen-
cies, however heavily they may be financed and however
supported by eminent individuals, to influence school ad-
ministrators and teachers to seek other objectives than those
which have public approval or to use methods and materials
not directed by responsible management is an impudence
not to be tolerated. Though cloaked with declared benevo-
lence, it cannot hide the arrogance underneath. J

There is no doubt that Professor Briggs was referring to Dr.
Robert M. Hutchins when he said that one man was responsible
for the staffing of The Fund for the Advancement of Education.
The Fund was his creature and his design. It is well known that
Dr. Hutchins’s ideas on education and the responsibility of teach-

♦ Ibid.j p. si.

f Reece Committee Hearings , p. 94 et seq,
j Reece Committee Report t p. 167.

FUND FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION 257

ers runs severely counter to accepted theory; and I believe it safe
to say that The Fund for the Advancement of Education has used
its millions in great measure to propagate Dr. Hutchins’s ideas.

I have no doubt that some of Dr. Hutchins’s theories are merito-
rious and even, in some respects, far superior to prevailing theories
of education. Indeed, he has lined himself up with those who
have revolted against the scientific humanist theory of progress. In
his Freedom , Education and The Fund* he says (p. 97);

According to the dogmas of scientism, skepticism, and sec-
ularism there is no * * * truth. If there is truth at all, it
is truth discoverable in the laboratory, by what is called
the scientific method.

Further (p. 136):

Underneath the writings of almost all writers on education
lies the doctrine of social reform. They cannot look at the
society around them and like it. How is the society to be
changed? There are only two ways: revolution and educa-
tion.

And (p. 128):

But I believe it is dangerous as well as futile to regard
the educational system as a means of getting a program of
social reform adopted. If one admits the possibility of ob-
taining through the schools social reforms that one likes,
one must also admit the possibility of obtaining social re-
forms that one dislikes. What happens will depend on the
popularity of various reformers, the plausibility of their
causes, and the pressure they are able to exert on the ed-
ucational system,

It is “unwise and dangerous,” he continues, to look at the educa-
tional system “as an engine of social reform,”

However commendable some of Dr. Hutchins's ideas on edu-
cation may be, the fact remains that a system which enables any

• A Meridian paperback book, 1956.

258 THE FORD FOUNDATION

one employee to use the terrific power of a vast public trust fund
to propagandize his own educational ideas is not to be tolerated,
as Professor Briggs rightly maintained.

Other data assembled by the Reece Committee bear out Profes-
sor Briggs’s disgust with The Fund for the Advancement of Edu-
cation. An illustration is the $565,000, three-year grant by the
Fund to The Institute of Philosophical Research in San Francisco
which, according to the Ford 1952 annual report, is to concentrate
on a “clarification of educational philosophy,” An objective study
of “educational philosophy1' could be highly desirable. The com-
mittee wondered, however, whether The Ford Foundation had se-
lected Dr. Mortimer Adler to head this study in order to make
sure that it would be objective.

Dr. Adler, another old friend of Dr. Hutchins, has made his
sympathy with collectivism entirely clear. In an article in 1949 in
Common Cause , he said that we are in “a quiet but none the less
effective revolution.” He did not disapprove of this revolution. Its
direction was leftist, and he liked it.

He wrote:

By choice the American people are never going to fall back
to the right again. * * * That deserves to be called a
revolution accomplished. Either the Democratic Party will
move further to the left or a new political party will form
to the left of the Democrats.*

Dr. Adler has also expressed himself forcefully to the effect that
world peace “requires the total relinquishment and abolishment of
the external sovereignty of the United States. . . ."f

This is the man chosen by The Ford Foundation to direct "a
dialectical examination of western thought” and “to clarify educa-
tional philosophy.” Starting in 1952 with his budget of $565,000,
Dr. Adler has produced nothing very substantial to date except a
report called Research on Freedom: Report of Dialectical Discov-
eries and Constructions .

* Ibid., p. 162,
f Ibid., p. 227.

THE FUND FOR ADULT EDUCATION 259

There are indications that the Ford trustees are not wholly satis-
fied with the results of their gigantic expenditures through their
Fund for the Advancement of Education. Dwight Macdonald, in
discussing the jargon used by foundation executivies, said this:

Thus, President Gaither, a master of foundationese, writes
in his 1954 Annual Report, apropos of the trustees’ decision
to cut the annual rate of support for the Fund for the
Advancement of Education from $10,000,000 to $3,000,000,
“In adopting this course, the Trustees acknowledged the
encouraging results of the Fund’s efforts in a relatively
short period and reaffirmed their belief that the Fund’s
assistance to education showed exceptional promise for
the future. [Translation: The trustees are cooling off toward
the Fund and have decided to spend most of their educa-
tional money themselves in the future.]”*

THE (FORD) FUND FOR ADULT EDUCATION

When The Ford Foundation decides to enter some field of opera-
tion, it does not do so in modest fashion. Through 1956, its grants
to its own Fund for Adult Education totaled $47,400,000. This
illustrates clearly enough the dangers inherent in foundation size.
Adult education is a worthy area of foundation activity when such
education is objectively directed. But $47,400,000 is a tidy sum to
hand over to those who may be inclined to use it for social and
political propaganda.

One of the projects richly supported by the Fund for Adult
Education was the Great Books Discussion Groups, operated by
The American Library Association through its American Heritage
Project. “Adult education” was to be based on group discussions
of the “Great Books” and educational films. Adults were to be
brought together in public libraries to discuss the great American
documents and “American political freedoms.”

The use of the term “American political freedoms” might have
given the Ford trustees pause. The word “freedoms” used in this

• The Ford Foundation , p. 102.

260 THE FORD FOUNDATION

connection has a special semantic significance. Radicals, domestic
and foreign, have been trying for years to reconstruct our basic
charter of liberties, our “inalienable rights,, by superimposing or
substituting for some of them new concepts of “freedom from"
various social ills. Much of the thinking behind these new “free-
doms” has come out of the United Nations, where Marxists have
had their say in limiting the rights to which we adhere and in add-
ing concepts which are foreign to us.

The Reece Committee, unable to do complete research on the
work of these Discussion Groups, did find some highly interesting
items among the prescribed materials employed. The Committee
found that the Great Books project was closely allied, through its •
directorate, to The Encyclopedia Britannica , which issued 16mm.
documentary films sometimes used by the discussion groups. The
materials which the Committee collected “leaned heavily to civil
liberties, political and social action, and international world poli-
tics.” Many of the authors whose works were sLudied were extreme
leftists. But it was selection of films used by the discussion groups
which most induced the Committee to doubt “the objectivity and
good faith of those responsible for the selection of individuals and
discussion materials." The following is the Committee’s descrip-
tion of some of the films:

Due Process of Law Denied

This film, somewhat uniquely paired with “The Adven-
tures of Huckleberry Finn” deals with excerpts from “The
Ox Bow Incident,” a brutal story of mob “justice.” De-
scribed in the material furnished to the discussion groups
as “forceful re-enacting of a lynching,” a more accurate
statement is that it is inflammatory and designed to convey
the impression that throughout the United States there is
widespread disregard for law and order.

The Cummington Story

By Waldo Salt, who on April 15, 1951, refused to answer,
claiming the privilege of the Fifth Amendment when ques-

THE FUND FOR ADULT EDUCATION 261

tioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee re-
garding his Communist affiliations.

The House I Live In

By Albert Maltz referred to earlier, who refused to an-
swer questions regarding his Communist Party record, and
was cited for contempt.

Of Human Rights

Prepared by the United Nations Film Department, it is
used with the United Nations Declaration on Human
Rights, and is described as follows:

“An incident involving economic and racial prejudice
among children is used to dramatize the importance of
bringing to the attention of the peoples of the world their
rights as human beings as set forth in the Universal Declara-
tion of Human Rights proclaimed by the UNP General As-
sembly in December 1948.” [Emphasis supplied.]

The United States government by rejecting this Universal
Declaration has gone on record as stating this country does
not consider that document — prepared in collaboration with
the Communists — as a statement of our “rights as human
beings/* The rights of citizens of the United States are set
forth in the Declaration of Independence, in the Constitu-
tion and its Amendments.

Brotherhood of Man

Also suggested for use on the program “Human Rights/*
this film produced by United Productions of America for
the United Automobile Workers of the CIO is distributed
by Brandon Films. The Washington representative of Bran-
don Films testified before the Jenner Committee in May
1951 that Brandon Films advertised in the Daily Worker
but took refuge behind the Fifth Amendment against self-
incrimination when questioned as to his own Communist
Party membership,

262 THE FORD FOUNDATION

The film itself is based on the pamphlet “Races of Man-
kind” written by Ruth Benedict and Gene WeltFish, whose
records are included in the Appendix. Following complaints
as to its nature and accuracy the pamphlet was withdrawn
from the Armed Forces Education Program — but as recently
as September of this year the film luas in use at the Film
Center at Fort Monmouth . To this Committee the use of
such a film cannot be justified, and it condemns the sub-
terfuge by which a document branded as inaccurate is with-
drawn as it were by one hand and surreptitiously reinstated
with the other.

With These Hands

Produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers*
Union, this film is a highly colored portrayal of violence on
the picket lines, featuring the horrors of the Triangle Fire
in New York City almost fifty years ago, giving a completely
unrealistic picture of present day working conditions.

The Challenge

This is another film on the theme that the guarantee
of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is denied to
Negroes and other minority group members in the United
States; it is unrealistic, distorted and deceptive.

Such presentations as these cannot be called educational
in the opinion of this Committee; they deliberately seek to
stress “what’s wrong” in present and past group relations
rather than provide facts for objective discussion of such re-
lations, and ignore the fact that here in the United States
can be found the outstanding example of liberty in action
in the world today.

The Fund For Adult Education along with the 20th Cen-
tury Fund, and the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, is closely associated with the Film Council of Amer-
ica. Evans Clark is listed as a member and William F. Kruse

THE FUND FOR ADULT EDUCATION 263

(at one time connected with Bell and Howell) is in a
policy-making position on the Filin Council. Mr. Kruse’s
background is particularly interesting to this Committee
since he carries great weight with the Council — and the
Council’s films find their way into the discussion groups
sponsored by the American Library Association with Ford
money.

Mr Kruse is reliably reported to have been a Communist
as recently as 1943, and there are witnesses who state he
still was after that date. As late as 1943 he was listed as
sponsoring the Chicago Council of American-Soviet Friend-
ship.

Another individual indirectly associated with the Film
Council is John Grierson, who produced “Round Trip,”
spearhead for a world trade campaign in this country star-
ring Paul Hoffman. Grierson resigned as head of the Na-
tional Film Board of Canada at the time of the Canadian
atomic spy ring revelations. Denied a visa to this country
he came in th rough Unesco and thereafter headed the film
section of that organization. Unesco and UNO films are
likewise used in the [Great] Books discussion groups.

The 16mm. film is being increasingly recommended for
use in all levels of education — including so-called adult ed-
ucation. This Committee would strongly urge that the whole
matter of the type of films as well as the subject matter
and the individuals and organizations who produce these
films, be carefully studied. There is no greater media today
through which to propagandize and it is no exaggeration
to say that such things as ostensibly “educational” films
can well prove to be the Trojan horse of those ideologies
which seek to scuttle American principles and ideals.*

The Fund for Adult Education seems also to have been a Hoff-
man-Hutchins product. The President of the Fund is C. Scott
Fletcher, who has been closely associated with both. He was

* Reece Committee Report, pp. 164-166,

264 THE FORD FOUNDATION

president of the Encyclopedia Britannica Films, which was once
owned by the University of Chicago when Dr. Hutchins was
president of that institution. In some way not disclosed to the pub-
lic, Britannica passed into private hands, among them those of
Mr. Benton, with whom Dr. Hutchins has also been closely asso-
ciated. And Mr. Fletcher had been sales manager of the Stude-
baker Corporation while Mr. Hoffman was its President.

FORD "EDUCATES" LABOR

The Fund for Adult Education does not confine itself to the edu-
cation of the general adult public. It also devotes huge sums of
money to the "education” of labor as a special class in our society.

This "education” is of a special kind. Its nature may be gath-
ered from the heavy support given by The Fund for Adult Educa-
tion to The American Labor Education Service, which is de-
voted to educating labor in how to “Advance Labor’s Economic
and Political Objectives.”*

The American Labor Education Service distributes political
pamphlets. Many of these are produced by that other radical or-
ganization, The League for Industrial Democracy. As an indication
of how uninformed the trustees of The Ford Foundation must be
regarding the detail of their foundation’s operations, one of the
pamphlets widely distributed by the Ford-supported American
Labor Education Service is entitled “Fordism.” It is hardly com-
plimentary to the Ford Motor Company or to the memory of the
man who made the Ford Foundation billions available.

That The Ford Foundation might consider establishing general
and special courses of instruction for “labor” can be understood;
such educational efforts directed especially at factory workers
could be highly desirable. There cannot be any possible justifica-
tion, however, for the use of public trust funds to support organi-
zations devoted to “educating” labor to the leftist ends of such as
The American Labor Education Service and The League for In-
dustrial Democracy. It is difficult to believe that the Ford trustees
would countenance such appropriations were they aware of their

• Ibid., p< i o(5.

FORD AND INTERNATIONALISM 265

nature. The answer is that these trustees are quite out of touch
with much of the work of the great foundation which they, in the-
ory, administer.

It is difficult to believe that the Ford trustees have any under-
standing of the nature of the Inter-University Labor Education
Committee to which The Fund for Adult Education granted
$384,000 from January 1, 1952, to June 30, 1953. The Reece
Committee found an undated publication of this Education Com-
mittee entitled Labor’s Stake in World Affairs. It was marked “Pre-
liminary Draft for Limited Distribution and Comment.’'

This publication characterized the conflict between Russia and
the United States as a “struggle for world power." Labor must
fight communism, it indicated, but the impression was given to the
“labor" which The Ford Foundation was thus helping to “edu*
cate" that the Soviet Union wants peace, is against imperialism
and intervention, and wishes to cooperate with the United States.
This publication equates the Berlin airlift with the Russian block-
ade— one was no worse than the other — indeed, what could the
Russians do, it said, when the Western Powers restored industrial-
ization to Western Germany instead of persisting in agrarianiza-
tion? — the Russian blockade was a just retaliation.

The question is asked, should we (labor) fight if Russia at-
tacks? The answer given is “yes." Then the question is asked,
But what if we start the war? No answer is suggested.

These are illustrations of the tenor of this Ford-financed work of
“education" of “labor."*

FORD AND INTERNATIONALISM

On October 5, 1955, a luncheon took place on the premises of
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, at which Mr.
Chester Bowles delivered an address in which he explained the
usefulness of private agencies working abroad. He said:

The voluntary agencies have more force than representa-
tives of the government. They do not suffer from the re-

• Ibid., pp. 162-163.

266 THE FORD FOUNDATION

straints imposed on official emissaries. They are free peo-
ple.*

The same issue of the Times which reported this speech also re-
ported one by Mr. Paul Hoffman, former chairman of The Ford
Foundation and later chairman of its Fund for the Republic. Mr.
Hoffman, like Mr. Bowles, praised "voluntary welfare agencies. 11
Mr. Hoffman was speaking at a dinner of the newly created Fund
for Asia.

It is obvious enough that "voluntary agencies" are, in general,
most highly desirable when engaged in philanthropic work. When
such agencies, however, operate in the international area, con-
siderable risk may be involved. Dealing with the treacherous in-
ternational situation might better be left to government agencies,
whatever their limitations.

The Fund for Asia may be a wholly commendable enterprise.
But it would be well to understand whose agency it is to be; what
Asians it is to be "for"; who is to distribute its largess; and for what
purposes. "Agencies" often have an angelic appearance but turn
out to be unfortunate media as distributors of public trust funds.

The Reece Committee found an example of this in the case of
The American Friends Service Committee, to which The Ford
Foundation made very heavy grants. The Service Committee is an
active lobbying organization whose policies have included an ac-
quiescence, at least, in the Communist penetration of China. A re-
port of The American Friends Service Committee contained this
astounding statement:

Our own independence was achieved through a revolution,
and we have traditionally sympathized with the determined
attempts of other peoples to win national independence and
higher standards of living. The current revolution in Asia
is a similar movement, whatever its present association with
Soviet Communism.f

• The New York Times t Oct. 6, 1955.
f Recce Committee Report, p. 186.

FORD AND INTERNATIONALISM 267

One cannot get enthusiastic over the use by The Ford Founda-
tion of this agency for distributing its funds — an organization
which docs not seem to see any material difference between the
American Revolution and the Communist movement in China.
Yet Ford granted the Service Committee 51,134,000. Its expressed
justification for the size of this grant was that the officers of The
American Friends Service Committee had demonstrated their ca-
pacity "to deal effectively with" conditions which "lead to interna-
tional tensions."

But was everyone in The Ford Foundation, for example, igno-
rant of the fact that, in 1950, The American Friends Service Com-
mittee had written to President Truman:

Further intervention will result in the hardening of Chinese
resentment against America and the strengthening of Sino-
Russian ties. By treating Communist China as an enemy
and by refusing to recognize her, we are not isolating
China, we are isolating ourselves.*

The American Friends Service Committee was itself a tax-
exempt organization. The propriety of such an organization at-
tempting to influence the foreign policy of the United States can-
not be defended. Moreover, its public pronouncements had shown
that funds distributed by it might well be used for objectives suit-
ing its own theories of foreign relations, regardless of the extent to
which these might conflict with those of our government.

One of the grandiose schemes of The Ford Foundation (in its
selected area of "The Establishment of Peace") was the creation
of Intercultural Publications, Inc., to "increase understanding
among peoples." What kind of an "understanding" of the people
of the United States has this creature of The Ford Foundation
given to other nations? The Reece Committee found among the
members of the advisory board of Intercultural Publications, Inc.
(and among those who contributed articles to its periodical or
whose books were reviewed in it) a large number of persons with

# Ibid., p. 187.

268 THE FORD FOUNDATION

extensive Communist-front associations or of extreme leftist tend-
encies.

Whatever mistakes our own government may have made, and
may be making, in portraying the American people and their po-
litical and social ideas to others, it would seem far safer for us to
rely upon government than upon a creature of The Ford Founda-
tion to do our international “public relations” job for us.

The Ford Foundation has apparently spent some $90,000,000
in aid of foreign countries, There is considerable doubt whether
the American people have received their money’s worth for the
many billions spent by our government on foreign aid. But at least
this has been official spending, authorized by our elected represent-
atives. The millions spent abroad by The Ford Foundation consti-
tute public trust funds, spent by private individuals without the
people's consent, knowledge, or understanding.

Time was when foundations confined themselves, in foreign
grants, to religious objectives (such as the establishing of missions);
educational purposes (such as the creation and support of
schools); and public health. Not so today. Some of them, Ford
and Rockefeller particularly, have launched themselves widely
into foreign projects which might be classed as international “do-
gooding,'* along program lines of their own design. In the case of
The Ford Foundation, responsibility can probably be attributed
to Mr. Paul Hoffman, who became so accustomed to paying out
gigantic sums for foreign aid when he was an administrator of our
government's aid program that he could not curtail the habit.

To what extent have these foreign grants of The Ford Founda-
tion interfered or worked at cross-purposes with our State De-
partment? To what extent have they supported ideologies to
which Mr. Hoffman and his associates have been attached, though
they contravened what is acceptable to the American people? To
what extent have these private administrators of public trust funds
wasted millions and millions of dollars? I cite one example of
waste mentioned by Mr, Macdonald — the grant by Ford to The
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace of $100,000 to assist
in undertaking “a two year program of studies of national policies

FORD AND INTERNATIONALISM 269

and attitudes toward the United Nations." Mr. Macdonald char-
acterized this project as “like making a map of a cloud hovering
over a fog."#

Apparently The Ford Foundation, under Mr. Hoffman's guid-
ance, concluded that our relations with some "undeveloped” na-
tions could be improved by the expenditure of great sums in those
countries. Our own government had had a similar theory. How-
ever, as I have said, it would seem safer to let our government take
whatever risks are involved than to permit private agencies to al-
locate public trust monies for such ends, The millions, for exam-
ple, which Ford has poured into India — have they been well spent?
This enormous nation now shows an increasing distaste for the
United States and a rapidly increasing affection for the Soviet
government. Should it not occur to the trustees of The Ford
Foundation that they have no business using public trust funds
to further a Ford Foundation Foreign Policy?

A startling example of Ford Foundation Foreign Policy is its
recent giant of $500,000 to allow Polish social scientists, archi-
tects, engineers and writers to study in the United States and
Western Europe, and for a few American and European scholars,
to study in Poland. The Rockefeller Foundation has joined this
new procession and has announced a $475,000 grant to Poland
"for scientific research in agriculture and medicine.” f It does not
appeal to my sense of logic that we should be assisting the Com-
munist Empire. But, if contrary opinion is valid and the Commu-
nists of the Iron Curtain countries should be assisted, should not
that decision be made by our President and Congress rather than
by the Ford or Rockefeller foundations? After all. The Ford Foun-
dation and The Rockefeller Foundation are dispensing public
trust funds. I cannot imagine any stretch of logic or interpretation
of propriety which would entitle foundation trustees to apply
American, public trust funds to the use of Communists,

One of the most fantastically futile and wasteful projects de-
signed by Mr. Hoffman for The Ford Foundation was a study of

* The Ford Foundation, p. 104.
t New York Herald Tribune , May ay, 1957,

270 THE FORD FOUNDATION

how we could achieve peace. It was Mr. Hoffman’s na'ive belief
that the expenditure of enough money on “studies0 could find the
answers which The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
had not been able to discover in all its long history. Apparently,
it was Mr. Hoffman’s theory, which he convinced the trustees to
adopt, that there was no basic problem of Soviet intransigence or
of Russian determination to destroy the capitalist world. All that
was needed was for a group of scholars to sit down and figure out
what we had to do, and what the Russians had to do, so that peace
could reign. Something like $100,000 of the Foundation’s public
trust funds went down this drain.

Nor has the Foundation given up hope that better international ‘
relations can be developed if only the American people become
more “international-minded.” This thesis has governed a large
part of the work of The Carnegie Endowment. But the Endow-
ment cannot plunge the way The Ford Foundation can. The lat-
ter allotted $6,500, 000 to six law schools “to develop a program of
international studies ” And the program for “intercultural rela-
tions,” started by Mr. Hoffman, is being continued with a probable
aggregate expenditure of $375,000. Mr. Macdonald has said, “The

budget reads like an academic W.P.A.”*

Indeed, with so much money to spend, The Ford Foundation
obviously must scramble around actively to find ways in which to
use its vast funds. Quite a large percentage of its grants might be
classed with the “boondoggling” of the 3o’s. Far more serious
than such waste of public trust money, however, are the instances
of affirmatively harmful projects. Of these, one of the worst is The
Fund for the Republic.

THE (FORD) FUND FOR THE REPUBLIC

The Fund for the Republic is the finest flower of what might be
called the “philandering school of philanthropy.” It was the brain
child of Mr. Paul Hoffman, probably midwifed by Dr. Hutchins. It
was born simultaneously with Mr. Hoffman’s release as chairman
of The Ford Foundation, and it is not unreasonable to suppose

* Ibid., pp. 164-165.

THE FUND FOR THE REPUBLIC 271

that there was a connection between the two events. It is sus-
pected that Mr. Hoffman was given charge of the $15,000,000
capital of The Fund for the Republic, to use for the promotion of
some of his favorite ideas, as a sop to his feelings.*

It was not long before The Ford Foundation trustees decided
that they could not stand Dr. Hutchins either, and relieved him
of his duties as a principal director, whereupon Mr. Hoffman in-
stalled him as president of The Fund for the Republic, to the chair-
manship of which Mr. Hoffman had been demoted. Messrs. Hoff-
man and Hutchins were thus together again. Inasmuch as The
Fund for the Republic was given independence by The Ford
Foundation, these two were to have their heyday.

The Fund for the Republic holds itself out to be educational in
purpose. Its handsome and expensively printed report of May 31,
1955*+ includes this statement, written by Dr. Hutchins:

The object of the Fund is to advance an understanding of
civil liberties. The Board of Directors believes that the
rights of Americans should not be compromised or lost
through neglect or confusion. It believes that the citizen
should know what his rights are and what is happening to
them.

These noble purposes were put to the test when a proposal was
made to The Fund for the Republic that it cause a study to be
made of the rights reserved to the people by the Ninth and Tenth
Amendments to the Constitution. No grant was requested — the sug-
gestion was merely that the Fund, itself or through others, under-
take such a study. It seemed logical enough. The Fund claimed to
be interested in “civil liberties” and the proposal was to let the
people know what their “liberties” are.

• There is even another Hoffman in the picture. Mr. Hallock Hoffman, son
of Mr. Paul Hoffman, is listed as “Assistant to the President.0 Nepotism?
fThe Fund has never denied itself. In the first two years of operation,
it consumed $410,000 to make grants of $843,000. Its offices, both in Tasatlena
and New York, have been luxurious. Expense has seemed no serious concern,
Salaries have been by no means niggardly. Mr. Hutchins gets along on a
$50,000 salary; his assistant on one, I believe, of $35,000; and counsel is sim-
ilarly compensated.

272 THE FORD FOUNDATION

Certain rights and “liberties" were expressly reserved to the peo-
ple in the Constitution and its Amendments. The Ninth and
Tenth Amendments provided, further, that any rights which the
people might have which were not expressly enumerated were also
reserved to them. The point is, nobody seems to have any very
clear idea what these unenumerated, reserved rights may be.
Surelyi if The Fund for the Republic is dedicated to the purpose
(to use Dr. Hutchins's actual words) that "the rights of Americans
should not be compromised or lost through neglect or confusion,"
one might think it a necessary and basic use of some of its money
to have a study made to determine what our rights are. Surely,
if Dr. Hutchins meant what he said, that he wanted the citizen to
“know what his rights are and what is happening to them,” the
proposed study was a “must."

The proposal was rejected in writing by The Fund for the Re-
public on the ground that it did not fit into its program.

This reaction might have been expected. The documents attend-
ing the creation of The Fund for the Republic convinced the
Reece Committee that one of the Fund’s purposes had been to in-
vestigate Congressional investigations. It has turned out, in opera-
tion, even more dangerous than the Committee anticipated. While
the Reece Committee investigation was under way, The Fund
kept its skirts moderately clean. Since the fding of the Committee
report, however, it has shown its true colors as a propaganda
agency for the leftist political ideas of its directing officers, Messrs,
Hoffman and Hutchins, and similarly disposed, carefully col-
lected associates.

The Fund for the Republic now has to its credit many monu-
mental achievements in propaganda:

l. A $100,000 study of the Federal loyalty-security program, in-
tended to bring out criticism of the methods used to clear Commu-
nists and Communist sympathizers out of government employ.
Mr. Walter Millis, a consultant to the Fund, is associated with this
project. Mr. Millis, in a recent radio debate with Judge Robert
Morris, said: “What I object to is not the procedure in the [loy-
alty-security] program, but the very fact that the system is there.”

THE FUND FOR THE REPUBLIC 273

2. The subsidization of the Edward R, Murrow project to
circulate among schools and elsewhere his extended T.V. inter-
view with Robert Oppenheimer. This project was intended to
glamorize Dr. Oppenheimer after he had been stripped of his se-
curity clearance — an obvious attempt to discredit the security sys-
tem,

g. The $150,000 survey of high-school and college teachers to
ascertain the degree to which they have “feared” to teach contro-
versial subjects in the classrooms. The intention of this project was
to propagandize the false claim that the loyalty-security program
and “hysteria" on the part of the anti-Communists has terrorized
innocent teachers,

4. $300,000 study of the influence of communism in contempo-
rary American life. This project has distinguished itself by hiring
Earl Browder, former head of the Communist Party in the United
States and still an ardent Communist. It has also assigned a sub-
project to one Theodore Draper, who was once a reporter for The
Daily Worker and graduated from that to The New Masses .

5. The $185,500 study of “American attitudes, toward commu-
nism and civil liberties.” The purpose of this, obviously enough, is
to promote the Hoffman-Hutchins theory that our security meas-
ures violate “civil rights” and that the protection of these rights
may be more important than protecting ourselves against commu-
nism.

6. The $64,500 study of the “Communist record,” including
bibliographies. This project has produced A Bibliography on the
Communist Problem in the United States . It has been blasted by a
great number of informed critics. Professor Philip Taft of Brown
University, a leading authority on communism in trade unions,
has said that The Fund for the Republic deserves a “vote of
thanks from the Communist Party,” James T. Farrell, chairman of
the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, called it “inex-
cusable sloppiness.” Dr. John A. Sessions, assistant director of the
International Ladies Garment Workers Training Institute, has
been scorching in his criticism. He said the Bibliography “con-
sistently omitted the more important works of many of the very

274 THE FORD FOUNDATION

writers who have done most to illuminate the Communist prob-
lem.” “If/* wrote Dr. Sessions in The New Leader , "the Fund seri-
ously wishes to defend itself against such attacks as have been
leveled against it by Fulton Lewis and the American Legion, it
must do something to make amends for this bibliography."*

7. The $40,000 production of Freedom to Read, a film calcu-
lated to attack the banning of pro-Communist books from U. S.
Information Service propaganda libraries.

8. The purchase and circulation of a propaganda booklet writ-
ten by Dean Griswold of the Harvard Law School, entitled The
Fifth Amendment Today, a brief for the Fifth Amendment plead-
ers. Against the mass of material issued to the public of an anti-
anti-Communist nature, the Fund, as far as I have been able to
learn, has distributed only one piece of contrary literature. This is
an article written by C. Dickerman Williams, which devastates the
booklet, The Fifth Amendment Today, written by Dean Griswold.
But 35,000 copies of the Griswold book were distributed. And
only 1,000 of the Williams replyl Regarding Dean Griswold's
position, Mr. Williams had this to say in the National Review,
December 21, 1955:

* * * it is unfortunate, if not tragic, that the Harvard
Law School — with its energy, intelligence and prestige, and
its militant stand on the side of disclosure during the in-
vestigations of monopoly in the 1890*5 and 1 goo’s, of cor-
ruption in the 1920'$ and of questionable business practices
in the 1930’$— should be identified with the cause of conceal-
ment today, when the country is confronted with the far
more serious danger of Soviet penetration. The "methods”
and personalities of congressional investigators, whatever
they may be, hardly warrant such a reversal of position.

As far as I know, the Fund For The Republic has not distrib-
uted any copies of Common Sense And The Fifth Amendment,

• See Experts Hit Ford Fund Red Guide , New York World-Telegram, October
28, 1955. A revised Bibliography was subsequently produced but is by no
means adequate.

THE FUND FOR THE REPUBLIC 275

by Professor Sidney Hook of New York University (Criterion
Books, 1957), which leaves Dean Griswold s book in shreds.

9. The circulation of a large number of other leftish books,
among them

Banned Books , by Anne Lyon Haight;

Faceless Informers and our Schools , by Lawrence Martin;

Freedom Award Speeches, by Freedom House;

The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt, by Richard Hofstadter;

Grand Inquest , by Telford Taylor;

Government by Investigation, by Alan Barth;

Conformity and Civil Liberties , by Samuel A. Stouffcr;

The Kept Witness, by Richard H. Rovere;

To Insure the End of Our Hysteria, by Paul Hoffman;

Who “Collaborated” with Russia, by Paul Willen

delivered to legislators, lawyers, judges, college presidents and
others who might create opinion or influence legislation.

10. The purchase and wide distribution of a propaganda issue
of The Journal of the Atomic Scientists, intended as an attack on
our security system,

1 1. The $100,000 "blacklisting” study: the circulation of a ques-
tionnaire to firms using radio and television to discover what anti-
communists are doing.

1 2. An appropriation of $200,000 (later revoked under sufficient
ridicule and, perhaps, fear of losing tax exemption) to put Herb
Block on television. Herb Block is a cartoonist for the Washington
Post-Times. The 1954 report of The Fund for the Republic lists
this project under "Popular Education.” David Lawrence de-
scribed Mr. Block as "a cartoonist who regularly ridicules the se-
curity program and is noted for his ‘Left Wing cartoons.”*

13. The gift of $5,000 to a Quaker school board for its “cour-
ageous and effective defense of democratic principles” in having
voted to retain a Mrs. Knowles as a librarian. Mr. Herbert Phil-
brick, an F.B.I. undercover agent, had testified under oath that
Mrs. Knowles had been a member of the very Communist cell

* N.Y. Herald Tribune, Se pt. 16, 1955.

276 THE FORD FOUNDATION

which he had joined in his F.B.I. work — and Mrs. Knowles had in-
terposed the Fifth Amendment when asked under oath whether
she had ever been a Communist.

14. The employment on its staff of one Amos Landman, three
weeks after he had been named under oath as having been a Com-
munist and had himself pleaded the Fifth Amendment when
asked whether he had ever been one. His employment by The
Fund for the Republic was as a “publicity man!" Dr. Hutchins
had recently gone so far (it took him quite a while to get there) as
to admit that communism was a danger to the United States.
Nevertheless, he has stated that he would hire a Communist if he
were "qualified” for the job at hand, regardless of the man’s previ-
ous record,

15. The $25,000 “study” at Stanford University of the testi-
mony of witnesses in proceedings relating to communism. This
study was accepted by the dean of the Stanford Law School
without the approval of the trustees. The dean is the director of
Far Eastern Affairs for The Ford Foundation. The study is to be
conducted under one Herbert Packer, a former employee of The
Fund for the Republic. The result will no doubt be a deprecation
of the testimony of reformed Communists, such as Elizabeth Bent-
ley and Louis Budenz, whose disclosures of Communists have
been so important to the security of the United States.

16. The grant of $395,000 to The Southern Regional Council.
The Neio York Journal American reported on November 7, 1955,
that the board of directors of this organization “includes 21
members with past pro-Communist affiliations.”

David Lawrence, in his column of August *8, 1955, referring
to The Fund for the Republic, called attention to the "current
wave of appeasement” which is destroying our national ideals, and
continued:

There is, for example, a deliberate attempt to pooh-pooh
Communist infiltration in the United States. Scarcely a day
passes that some blow isn’t struck at those who are fighting
Communist subversion. Thus, in the last few days a docu-

THE FUND FOR THE REPUBLIC 277

ment has been published o£ a study financed by the Ford
Foundation. It selects pieces of testimony and tries to make
the security proceedings of the United States look capricious
and ludicrous. Nowhere is the full transcript of any hearings
given so that both sides of the cross-examination and the
reasons for it can be understood.

When Sen. McCarthy stood up in the Senate and gave se-
lected items about individuals suspected of Communist as-
sociations, he was pilloried for giving only one side. But
when the Ford Foundation study gives only piecemeal items
without all the background, no criticism is voiced from
"Left Wing” quarters. Recently there has been a hue and
cry about anonymous informants but the Ford Foundation
study now being publicized is anonymous so far as giving
the facts or the story of both sides or the sources of the
study.

Nor is any information being given to the public as to why
some of the questions asked in hearings could be pertinent
to a security investigation. * # * It is only common sense
not to let anybody occupy a government position or be given
a post in the armed services if he could later be the victim
of attempted blackmail.

The American Legion has several times, at its national conven-
tion, adopted resolutions urging Congress to make a further and
complete study of tax-exempt foundations. National Commander
Seaborn P. Collins of the American Legion, according to a New
York Herald Tribune report of September 11, 1955, called on
Legion members to “have no truck" with The Fund for the Re-
public. He said:

I am issuing this alert to our membership because it appears
that the Fund for the Republic, headed by Dr. Robert
Maynard Hutchins, is threatening and may succeed in crip-
pling the national security.

278 THE FORD FOUNDATION

He accused the Fund o£ ‘'constant, loaded criticism of Congres-
sional and Administration efforts to resist Communist infiltra-
tion.” He said:

One apparent line of attack is the attempt to persuade
Americans that communism is not, and never has been, a
serious threat to the United States.

This propaganda is considered by the American Legion
to be as dangerous as it is untrue, but we recognize that
even such propaganda as that being disseminated by the
Fund for the Republic can be sold to many Americans when
millions of dollars are behind the sales effort.

After the American Legion had become critical of his work, Dr.
Hutchins took a paid full-page ad in the American Legion Maga-
zine to defend The Fund for the Republic. The Legion Magazine,
in commenting on this advertisement, said:

Incidentally, we are holding in escrow the money paid for
the advertisement on the preceding page. There is a dif-
ference of opinion as to whether an eleemosynary organiza-
tion may properly spend money in this way, and we are
holding it till such time as this point is adjudicated.

It should concern the Internal Revenue Service whether a foun-
dation is expending its funds for purposes entitling it to tax ex-
emption when it buys advertising space in magazines and when it
engages “public relations counselors. “

The Fund for the Republic is not without defenders. The Neio
York Times of September 25, 1955, reported that Dr. Nathan M.
Pusey, president of Harvard University, had said, in an address of
the day before, that the attack on The Fund by Mr. Collins of the
Legion was “an incredibly misguided action. “ The Times reported
further:

Noting that several trustees of the Fund for the Republic
were present, Dr. Pusey said that the record would show
“to any fair-minded observer’* that the Fund had hewed

THE FUND FOR THE REPUBLIC 279

to its basic aims in two years of operation. (Emphasis sup*
plied,)

Dr. Pusey was entirely correct — that is, if the aims of The Fund
for the Republic were, as the Reece Committee suspected, to prop-
agandize for certain extreme “liberal” political views.

In December 1955 Mr. George Meany, president of the
merged A.F.L. and C.I.O., delivered a fiery address inveighing
against the quiescent attitude of “liberals” toward communism. He
said:

Communism is the very opposite of liberalism. Communism
is the deadliest enemy of liberalism. Liberals should be the
most consistent and energetic fighters against communism.
Liberals must also be on guard against developing a certain
type of McCarthyism of their own. They must shun like a
plague the role of being anti-anti-Communist.

The Fund for the Republic has not shunned this role. It has be-
come the leader of the anti-anti-Communist movement in the
United States.

Not only have Mr. Hoffman and Dr. Hutchins given an anti-anti-
Communist leadership to The Fund for the Republic, but it has
been a very fuzzy one, indeed. This was brought out in an edito-
rial in the Los Angeles Times of August 28, 1955, which dis-
cussed the current Fund report. The editorial said that there was a
question whether The Ford Foundation had “got its money’s
worth out of the Fund’s $2,514,738 expenditures to date.” The
editorial reviewed the basic laws which protect our “civil rights”
and then said;

One is tempted to believe that these basic laws have not
been carefully read by Dr. Hutchins. For in his report
he says:

“The treatment accorded suspected persons in Congres-
sional hearings has not always been that contemplated by the
Sixth Amendment:

Here is the Sixth Amendment:

"In all criminal prosecutions , the accused shall enjoy the

280 THE FORD FOUNDATION

right to a speedy and public trial , by an impartial jury of
the Slate and district zoherein the crime shall have been
committed which district shall have been previously ascer-
tained by lazu , and to be informed of the nature and cause of
the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against
him; to have compulsory process for obtaiziing zvitnesses in
his favor , and to have the assistance of counsel for his de-
fensey

Neither Congressional investigations or administrative
hearings are mentioned in the amendment. For neither of
these is a "criminal prosecution." If there is reasonable evi-
dence of criminality, the normal processes of trial then take
place wherein the individuals concerned have the complete
protection of the Constitution.

These are samples of the hazy thinking about civil rights
in the Hutchins report and a continuation of the bizarre
points of view he has had in these matters. * * *

I must record one more example of Fund For The Republic
absurdity. While the manuscript of this book was in final process
of preparation, the New York Herald Tribune (July 2, 1957) re-
ported an announcement by the Fund For The Republic of the
appointment of a committee of "consultants" who are to under-
take an inquiry into "the impact on individual freedom and civil
liberty of two large modern institutions — the industrial corpora-
tion and the labor union." The "consultants" are: Adolph A.
Berle, Henry R. Luce, Scott Buchanan, Eugene Burdick, Eric
Goldman, Clark Kerr, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, Isador I.
Rabi, Robert Redfield and Reinhold Niebuhr. While this com-
mittee is obviously well-stacked with "liberals” — some extremely
to the left — it has one further interesting characteristic. In his syn-
dicated column of August 1, 1957, Raymond Moley pointed out
that the list reveals "an astonishing absence of people who have
ever had any experience with either corporations or unions. All
except one are professors or college administrators." The one ex-
ception (Mr, Luce), said Moley, has had no experience "in the

RESPONSIBILITY OF FORD TRUSTEES 281

industrial climate which conditions the problems with which this
study purports to deal.”

Moley concludes: "The exclusion of people experienced in run-
ning corporations and labor unions makes certain that the personal
views of Hutchins will have no opposition.'* The panel of "con-
sultants'’ is a carefully hand-picked one. An objective report from
this group is too much to hope for. I wonder whether the new
management of The Ford Foundation is pleased with this project
generated by its offspring, The Fund.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FORD TRUSTEES

The Fund for the Republic raises, in a harrowing way, the prob-
lem of trustees’ responsibility. Some of the statements filed with
the Reece Committee by foundations proclaimed the utterly
sound principle that a foundation should not exercise censorship
in the execution of a grant. But they used this sound principle to
excuse , themselves from responsibility for damage which could
have been anticipated. There is a great deal of difference between
insisting on controlling the research engaged in by Professor
Jones to whom a grant has been made, and making sure that the
professor to be selected for the grant is not one given to radicalism
and strong bias in his work. There is a world of difference be-
tween requiring conformity of a researcher and insisting on objec-
tivity in selecting him; the former is reprehensible; the latter is a
public duty.

Yes, there might be one exception to this conclusion. A grant
might properly be made to a person of known bias, if this were
part of a program or plan in which the contrary point of view
would also be adequately and fairly presented to the public.

According to newspaper reports, Mr. Henry Ford II finally got
around to disavowing The Fund for the Republic. He did this in a
series of letters to correspondents who asked him why he re-
mained silent in view of the apparent record of the Ford Foun-
dation-created Fund. Mr. Ford said that some of the actions of
The Fund for the Republic "have been dubious in character and
inevitably have led to charges of poor judgment.** This was rather

202 THE FORD FOUNDATION

a weak disavowal. Mr. Ford must know that some o£ the activities
of the Fund have been more than “dubious" and that far more
than mere poverty of “judgment" was involved. Mr. Ford main-
tained, in any event, that The Ford Foundation was not responsi-
ble in any way, because it had created the Fund as an independent
unit, to be managed by its own board.* This position cannot be
accepted by the public.

As The Wall Street Journal of December 9, 1955, put it in an
editorial commenting on Mr, Ford’s position:

So here are a group of men who have been handed $15
million to spend in the Ford name for political and educa-
tional purposes without being accountable to anyone. They
are not subject to recall or referendum. They appoint their
own successors. They could if they chose, adopt projects to
“educate" for communism, fascism or whatever fancy struck
their heads. And no one could say them nay.

Can Mr. Ford and the other Ford Foundation trustees dodge
responsibility by saying that they created an independent and self-
governing unit? Can one, fairly and ethically, just pour fifteen mil-
lion dollars into anyone’s lap and say: "Do with this what you
will; I wash my hands of what you do”? Yes, perhaps that might
be done in making a grant to a university, a church, a hospital, or
some other responsible, existing institution with recognizable and
acceptable traditions and standards. Otherwise, the maxim dele-
gatus non potest delegare applies— that no trustee can delegate his
trust function.f

No, the money being so wrongfully used by The Fund for the
Republic is Ford Foundation money, and the public, which was
required to be made the beneficiary of The Ford Foundation in

• Actually, the umbilical cord between The Ford Foundation and The Fund
for the Republic was not wholly severed. It was provided that, if the Fund
lost its tax exemption, its remaining money would revert to the parent.

-j-This maxim was quoted at the Cox Committee hearings by Dr. Henry
Allen Moe of The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. This
foundation, itself, made many regrettable grants, some of them to Commu-
nists; but at least Dr. Moe did not try to dodge the responsibility of trustees
for the application of the funds they administer.

RESPONSIBILITY OF FORD TRUSTEES 283

order for the Ford family to reap the tax advantages which went
with its creation, is entitled to trace that money and to judge its
application.

The grant to The Fund for the Republic was not made unwit*
tingly. The trustees selected Mr. Paul Hoffman to run it. They
must have known Mr. Hoffman’s opinions and proclivities and un-
derstood that its offshoot, placed in his control, would likely follow
his bent — just, indeed, as they must have known, when placing Dr.
Hutchins in charge of The Fund for the Advancement of Educa-
tion, that the result would be a Hutchins product.

The Ford trustees might have acquired some insight into the
way The Fund for the Republic would be managed when its
chairman, Mr. Hoffman, initially announced that it proposed "to
help restore respectability to individual freedom”— -a statement
which the Reece Committee report characterized as "obviously a
product of the ‘red herring and ‘witch hunt’ school of political
philosophy" and as "arrogant, presumptuous and insulting."*

The Ford trustees should also have known that there were in-
herent dangers in the detailed program which Mr. Hoffman pre-
sented to them for The Fund for the Republic. This touched deli-
cate political areas. A foundation should not necessarily shy from
delicate areas. If it wishes to enter them, however, it is ethically
obliged to exercise the greatest circumspection. Every reasonable
effort should be made to assure that subjects which contain politi-
cal dynamite will be handled with the care they require — with full
objectivity and fairness. In permitting their creature. The Fund
for the Republic, to become a propaganda machine for the ad-
vancement of leftist political ideas, the Ford trustees abandoned
their duty to the public to whose service they were dedicated by
accepting appointment. By suffering The Fund for the Republic to
fall into the hands of persons who might have been expected to
use it for propaganda, these Ford trustees, by negligence at least,
became party to actions against the public welfare.

The statement filed by The Ford Foundation with the Reece
Committee said:

• Reece Committee Report , p. 114.

284 THE FORD FOUNDATION

The trustees of the Ford Foundation are proud of their act
in creating the Fund for the Republic.*

Since then we have had Mr. Henry Ford II's qualified and gen-
tle disapproval of some of the actions of The Fund for the Repub-
lic. But his was an expression of personal opinion. There has been
no, official Ford Foundation repudiation of The Fund for the Re-
public. As far as the public knows, except for Mr. Ford’s moderate
criticism of The Fund for the Republic, the trustees are wholly sat-
isfied. with all the Ford Foundation's works,

BAS THE FORD FOUNDATION CHANGED ITS SPOTS?

Nothing would be more conducive to better foundation public re-
lations than for these trustees to come forward with frank self-
criticism, disclosing to the public (whose interests they represent)
exactly how dissatisfied they have been with their performance to
date. I am sure they cannot be entirely happy, and an honest self-
critical report could constitute a most valuable catharsis.

When the major grants of the Ford Foundation in 1955 were
announced, many saw hope that its trustees had come to under-
stand the error of their ways and were ready to abandon the dis-
sipation of their funds in scientism and worse. Such hopes may
have been illusions, as the facts narrated in the following syndi-
cated article by Raymond Moley of February 29, 1956, may indi-
cate:

BEHAVIORISM AT HARVARD

The Influence of The Ford Foundation in The
Harvard Graduate School of Business
Administration.

The final report of Donald K. David, signalizing his re-
tirement as dean of the Graduate School of Business Ad-
ministration at Harvard, provides a vivid example of the
immense power that the Ford Foundation is exercising
over academic institutions of even the highest rank, And

• Reece Committee Hearings, p. 1053.

HAS FORD FOUNDATION CHANGED ITS SPOTS? 285

that influence, it seems, will be directed toward the adop-
tion by such institutions of a very special type of research
which seems to have possessed the Foundation since the
beginning of its career under Paul Hoffman and Robert
Hutchins.

It seems that during the past year the Ford Foundation
bestowed upon the school a grant of $2,000,000 for re-
search, with a strong hint that it be used in large part to
"further the increased use of the behavioral sciences, es-
pecially sociology, psychology and anthropology, in research
in and teaching of business administration." When three
billion dollars gives a hint, of course, it is a command.

It is interesting that Dean David is also a director of the
Ford Foundation, which raises the point of not a conflict,
but what might be called a community of interests. It is
more blessed to give than to receive. But when you can give
and receive at the same time, you may consider yourself
twice blessed.

It is also interesting to note that the dean’s report was
sent to graduates of the school with a covering letter from
Thomas H. Carroll, who is not only president of the alumni
association but Vice President of the Ford Foundation.

The directive that the funds be used on the "behavioral”
sciences follows almost the exact language of the original
purposes of the Ford Foundation,

The dean's report points out that research undertaken
in the school "must represent the specific interests of the
individual members of the Faculty," Apparently the "spe-
cific interests" of the present members of the faculty do not
provide the preoccupation with "behaviorism" so dear to
the Ford people. Accordingly, new talent is to be sum-
moned in the person of Professor Samuel A. Stouffer of the
Department of Social Relations across the Charles River.

Dr. Stouffer is well fitted to lead the business school into
the mysterious "scientism" desired by the Ford Foundation,
He has been a member of no less than four Ford advisory

286 THE FORD FOUNDATION

committees. During the war he served in the so-called
Information and Education Division of the War Depart-
ment. Mainly, according to ex-service men, that operation
was intent upon performing as many curious behavioristic
experiments as possible while the human guinea pigs were
under what social scientists call “control.’' He is co-author of
“The American Soldier/’ a work which will be bitterly
remembered by many responsible army officers. At the Uni-
versity of Chicago and later at Harvard he was able to
conduct his “controlled” probings on sophomores. At the
business school. Dr. Stouffer will work with a team of the
faculty leading toward a “new long-range program of re-
search in the area of consumer behavior.” One graduate of
the school said, after reading of the expected visitation of
Dr, Stouffer, that apparently “controlled experiments”
which have hitherto been possible only on (a) soldiers,
(b) sophomores, (c) guests in state institutions, will now be
performed upon (d) customers for the benefit of prospective
marketing experts.

So the old rule that the customer is a supreme being who
is always right will no longer have that distinction. He is
to become a guinea pig along with many other formerly
free citizens.

Lawyers well remember the invasion by the behaviorists
of the law schools and the strange sociological judicial opin-
ions we have seen in recent years. Now business manage-
ment is to have its turn.

In any event, this whole matter illustrates the creeping
control by the bureaucracy of the Ford Foundation over
higher education. It can happen even in a school like
this which has won a fine distinction by keeping fairly
close to its major interest which, according to its catalogue,
is “to provide opportunity for men to develop themselves
for positions of responsibility in private business or in the
business of government.” In short, business was its busi-
ness.

HAS FORD FOUNDATION CHANGED ITS SPOTS? 287

There is other evidence that the Ford trustees either have not yet
assumed full control of the foundation enterprise or else have not
yet decided to change the foundation’s coloration. In an article in
the National Review of April n, 1956, Mr. William Henry
Chamberlin deplores the support by The Ford Foundation of
The Foreign Policy Association, which apparently expects to re-
ceive a further twelve and a half million dollars from the founda-
tion. Mr. Chamberlin points out that the “general influence” of
The Foreign Policy Association “on American public opinion has
been in the direction of anti-anti-Communism.” This he lays
chiefly at the door of the guiding genius of the Association, Vera
Micheles Dean, now its president. This publication, he says, has
borne “over a period of a decade and more, the unmistakable
stamp of anti-anti-Communism.” The support of this leftward-
tending organization has not come from the severed Fund for the
Republic but from The Ford Foundation itself. And it is appar-
ently continuing.

There are, as I have pointed out earlier, indications that The
Ford Foundation has not changed its spots. But there are signs, on
the other hand, which give hope that it may eventually come to
measure up to its grave responsibility. One can only hope for the
best. As an instrument for good, this fantastically large founda-
tion could be of vast benefit to our people. As one managed with-
out absolute regard to objectivity, it can represent a horrible dan-
ger to our society.*

♦Since the preparation of the manuscript of this book, and even after it was
set in type, various announcements have been made by The Ford Foundation
of new grants and new programs. Some of these announcements are very en-
couraging. While many of the Foundation's wheels seem to be running in the
same old grooves, there are some sharp innovations. Particularly encouraging
aie the indications that the original emphasis on the "cultural lag" theory,
which largely underlay the Foundation’s statement of purposes adopted in
1949, is being toned down considerably. Many recent grants seem to show
that the Foundation no longer intends to be confined by the 1949 corset and
that it is becoming willing to branch out into deviations from its former
orthodoxy. I hope I am right in attributing this change to a realization by
the Trustees that the past performance of the Foundation left much to be
desired. I hope also that this has been due, partly at least, to the influence of
Dr. Heald.

9

FROM HERE ON?

AS IT IS

Since the publication of the report of the Reece Committee,
there has been more public criticism of foundations than in all the
previous history of foundations. Many writers, commentators, and
other publicists were shocked at what the Reece Committee found.
A hard core remains, consisting of those “liberals” who cannot see
anything wrong in the use of public trust funds to accomplish
“liberal” political ends. There is a third group, inclined at first to
take the revelations of the Reece Committee with a grain of salt,
which has had its eyes opened by the blunders of the Ford Foun-
dation's fatuous child, The Fund for the Republic. This should
gratify Congressman Reece, the David who had the courage to
face the foundation Goliaths and their serried ranks of defenders.

Large foundations such as Rockefeller and Carnegie have con-
tributed greatly (and often spectacularly) to the public welfare
through their work in medicine, public health, and other useful
fields; a list of their magnificent accomplishments, such as the es-
tablishment of the Carnegie libraries and the virtual wiping out of
several virulent diseases through Rockefeller-supported research,
would be very long indeed. But the wide and rightful publicity
given to these great public benefits have tended to dull public
sensitiveness to other developments in the foundation world which
have not been benign. These unpleasant developments could not
easily have been exposed without such an inquiry as the Reece
Committee conducted.

288

Only a small part of the foundation story has been told. The
Reece Committee strongly urged a continuance, or a resumption,
of its inquiry. It advocated “the most complete possible airing of
criticism and the most thorough possible assembling of facts.” It
concluded that in no other way could “foundation trustees come
to realize the full degree of their responsibility, nor the extent of
the dangers which they must avoid to prevent foundation destruc-
tion.”*

A continued Congressional investigation has been urged by reso-
lutions of the D.A.R., the American Legion, and other patriotic or-
ganizations. Such a continued investigation is bitterly opposed by
most foundation professionals. They consider such organizations
as the American Legion “anti-intellectual,” Its resolutions only
prove to the “liberal £lite” of the foundation world that they must
increase their efforts to lead the American people into a better way
of life.

The Rockefeller Foundation, for one, apparently intends to do
just that, if statements by its president, Mr. Dean Rusk, are any in-
dication. In an address at New York University, the president of
The Rockefeller Foundation appears to have made his position
clear. The New York Times of May 22, 1955# commented edi-
torially on this address as follows;

It is refreshing to be told that, in spite of Representative
B. Carroll Reece’s jitters about such matters, American foun-
dations are going to deal increasingly with “controversial”
issues — especially when this opinion is expressed by those
who know most about foundation activities. Both Dean
Rusk, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, and F. Em-
erson Andrews, author of authoritative studies in this field, f
said as much at the conference on the problems of the chari-
table foundations held at New York University last week.

You have to understand the jargon of major foundation profes-
sionals like Mr. Rusk to know what they are talking about. The

* Sec the Committee's recommendations, Appendix A of this book,
f Mr. Andrews is an executive of the Russell Sage Foundation,

4

r.

290 FROM HERE ON?

term '‘controversial/* as I have earlier indicated, does not imply
the fair presentation of two sides of an issue. What is meant is the
presentation of one side of a controversy, and one side only — the
“Iiberar side. As The New York Herald Tribune reported another
speech by Mr. Rusk (this time in Pasadena, in June 1955), he
said that The Rockefeller Foundation would continue “to support
vigorously a program of free and responsible scholarships.” This
promise would have been encouraging if the word "continue” had
not appeared in this news report. The Rockefeller Foundation,
when operating in the social sciences, in education, and in foreign
affairs, has not always shown a disposition to promote either
"free” or "responsible” scholarship. Its support of The Institute of
Pacific Relations and some of the worst characters in its dramatis
personae is but one case in point; as is its support of the "historical
blackout/*

The same editorial in The New York Times which lauded Mr.
Rusk and Mr. Andrews for stating that foundations would in-
crease their support of "controversial issues’* gave a clue to what
foundation executives meant by this term. It praised The Fund for
the Republic, which it selected for mention as an example of how
right Messrs. Rusk and Andrews were in predicting a general in-
crease in foundation support of "controversial issues.” If the Fund
for the Republic typifies what we are to be in for, then action by
the Congress to protect the people against the misuse of founda-
tion funds is sorely needed.

Happily, the work of the Congressional investigations has not
failed to influence foundations. There are indications that some of
them have begun to practice greater caution in their operations.
The gigantic gifts of The Ford Foundation to colleges and other
institutions in 1955, 1956, and 1957 evidenced a new policy of di-
rect support of education with no strings attached. The support of
the Kinsey studies by The Rockefeller Foundation ended after the
Reece Committee had illuminated the public regarding the origin
of the funds used for this project. The Social Science Research
Council has come out, in a recent report, for greater support of the
unattached, lone researcher. The Rockefeller Foundation has

A PLEA TO THE TRUSTEES 291

somewhat reorganized its administrative structure; and substan-
tial changes of personnel have taken place in The Ford Founda-
tion. Signs such as these are encouraging.

A PLEA TO THE TRUSTEES

In my initial report on proposed procedure to the Reece Com-
mittee* I expressed the opinion that no Congressional action
should be taken of a legislative nature unless it were unavoidable.
The Committee report concurred, I have not changed my position.
Much is tragically wrong with the way some of the foundations
have operated, much that has heavily damaged our society and
can continue to injure us. But there is hope that reform can come
about from within the erring foundations. I shall not, therefore,
conclude with any discussion of what legislative measures might
be considered in order to prevent further injury to our society, but
rather with what measures might be taken by trustees of founda-
tions in order to correct the unhappy situation from within and
thus forestall the otherwise inevitable, restrictive legislation.

1. It seems to me clear that no one should permit himself to be
a mere figurehead trustee of a great foundation. How much time
or application may be necessary for the proper discharge of a trus-
tee’s duty to the public depends on the size of the organization
and the complexity of its structure and of its program. Whatever
the answer is, it should be faced squarely.

2. The alternative to resignation, if the trustees find themselves
unable to contribute the time and attention which duty to the pub-
lic requires, is to simplify the program of the foundation to the
point that trustees can adequately discharge their duty directly
and without delegating their most essential functions to subordi-
nates or to other distributing organizations,

3. Unless the trustee is certain that he reasonably understands
the ramifications, intricacies, and implications of a proposed, de-
signed grant, it would seem improper for him to acquiesce in it.
The preferable alternative would be to make a grant direct to an
existing operating institution of recognized character, of the type

• See Appendix C.

292 FROM HERE ON?

of a college, university, hospital, or church, leaving the focusing
and designing of the project to it.

4. Trustees of foundations should avoid any situations involv-
ing a conflict of interest They should not serve on granting and
receiving boards of tax-exempt organizations simultaneously.
They should also insist on their employed executives exercising
similar cautions.

5. The avoidance of multiple trusteeships seems highly desira-
ble, to eliminate a concentration of power through interlocks.

6. The practice of so unreasonably favoring a few of the large
universities with research grants should be abandoned. The justi-
fication given for this favoritism, that the best men and the best
equipment are to be found at these institutions, is not wholly true.
Much research requires no equipment whatsoever; and all the best
brains in academic life are not to be found in the great universi-
ties. Moreover, more widespread research grants, in themselves,
would tend to widen the intellectual field, enable smaller institu-
tions (and men in them) to attain greater stature and reputation
and contribute more heavily to the development of our intellec-
tual and practical life.

y. Trustees of those foundations like The Ford Foundation
which have excluded themselves substantially from the natural
sciences might reconsider whether this decision has been wise. At
the 1956 annual dinner of The Research Corporation, a founda-
tion devoted to the development of natural science, an address
was made by Professor Robert Bums Woodward, an eminent sci-
entist of Harvard to whom the foundation’s annual award had
been presented. Dr. Joseph W. Barker, the president of the foun-
dation, had previously made a plea for greater support of scientific
studies and for the crying need to develop science teachers in or-
der to produce more scientists, so badly needed. This plea was
echoed and amplified by Professor Woodward.

Whenever foundation apologists seek to defend the founda-
tions against criticism, they point invariably to the great things
which foundations have done for our country. These great things

A PLEA TO THE TRUSTEES 293

have indeed been done, and the foundations responsible for
them (some large, like the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations,
and some smaller, like The Research Corporation and many oth-
ers) are almost invariably in the fields of natural science, medi-
cine, and public health, and some in the humanities. When major
foundation accomplishments are listed, how many fall within the
so-called “social sciences”? Very few, indeedl Is the theory
sound, then, that because enough is being done in true science
fields, foundations should "risk” their capital and income pre-
dominantly in "social” directions? Ask Professor Woodward, who
has synthesized cortisone, quinine, and cholesterol. Ask him what
he could do with the millions wasted by The Ford Foundation
and others on useless compilations of statistical material and on
the drafting and publication of masses of reports on "social” sub*
jects which will lie buried forever, useful to no one.

In exposing the crying need for further support of pure science,
Professor Woodward attacked the "culture-lag” theory, which is
at the bottom of the policy of some of the major foundations of
spending so much on organized social-science research. The Ford
Foundation has been the greatest sinner in this direction. Its initial
trustees succumbed to pressure by social-science advocates of the
cultural-lag theory — that we have developed science so rapidly
that we have not caught up socially. Out of this theory comes the
idea that organized projects should be financed to make patholog-
ical studies of our society and of our behavior in order to find
ways of enabling society to catch up with science.

This, in a way, is fiddling while Rome bums. I quote from the
concluding paragraphs of an address made by Admiral Strauss at
the Sixth Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Institute on "The
Growing Shortage of Scientists and Engineers” on November 21
and 2?, 1955:

The extent to which science has become a major factor in
our living, our environment and our fate, is something now
apparent to all who will examine the facts. Our position of

294 FROM HERE ON?

eminence and influence in the world has been due to the
prudent and vigorous applications of technology to the de-
velopment of our resources and our potential.

* * *

If we value these possessions which have made for our emi-
nence and influence, we must be prepared to defend them.
Our greatest possession — freedom — is itself partly the prod-
uct of science, since it was technology which made slavery un-
profitable, and under freedom and only under freedom all
our other treasures flourish.

It is a paradox that we should find ourselves at this point
in history suddenly poorer in the very means by which our
greatness was achieved. '

This is the cold war of the classrooms..

In five years our lead in the training of scientists and engi-
neers may be wiped out, and in ten years we could be hope-
lessly outstripped. Unless immediate steps are taken to cor-
rect it, a situation, already dangerous, within less than a
decade could become disastrous.

It may well turn out that The Ford Foundation and the other
foundation followers of the cultural-lag theory have made an ir-
retrievable error in not recognizing that what we face is not a cul-
tural but a scientific lag.

FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS

I do not propose that foundations should not support any social-
science research. I do propose that they should abandon almost
all of the vastly expensive, directed group-research procedures
which have been so characteristic of recent foundation operations
and have been so ridiculed by even warm friends of the founda-
tions. The individual social-science researcher should receive sup-
port for his own selected project. No group-research project would
have produced an Einstein. No group social-science research has
yet produced anything of monumental significance; but individ-

FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS 295

ual social scientists have produced, and ever will produce, much
of great value to our society if permitted to go their own selected
way.

The saving in abandoning those group-research projects which
have been so dear to the hearts of the executives of the foundation
combine would make available tens or hundreds of millions whicli
could be used to advance us in pure and applied science, in medi-
cine, and in public health, with ever greater speed. Nor do I mean
that the humanities should be neglected. Attention to the humani-
ties offers far more hope of preventing or curing any “cultural lag*
than any combination of group-research projects in the social sci-
ences.

Some of the largest foundations have virtually abandoned the
support of existing educational and other types of operating insti-
tutions on the theory that the government is now spending so
much money on direct support that private funds can be better
used elsewhere. This is a most regrettable position for foundation
trustees to take. It may well have behind it the conviction of some
of the most leftward-thinking foundation professionals that such
institutions should be supported, and therefore controlled, by the
state — an aspect of the paternal theory of government. It seems es-
sential to our social system, however, that there be private institu-
tions which can remain wholly outside any government control.

The fact is that private educational institutions have been des-
perately in need of funds. Hospitals and other social institutions so
necessary to human comfort need money badly. The partial
change of plan in The Ford Foundation which resulted in heavy
grants to such institutions in 1955, 1956, and 1957 deserves the
highest praise, and offers an example which other foundations
might well emulate.

One of the admirable characteristics of The Rosenwald Fund
was that it was to be expended and not carried on in perpetuity.
Perhaps perpetuity should be proscribed by law except in certain
specific instances. At any rate, where trustees have the power to
expend their capital, should they not consider carefully whether

296 FROM HERE ON?

it might not be better to allocate it gradually to institutions such as
universities, which can so well employ it, rather than to carry on
forever and spend only the income?

What is most important for the trustees of most of the major
foundations to understand is that they have lent themselves to the
virtual suppression of freedom of inquiry and freedom of expres-
sion in the social-science areas. There is no blinking the facts.
The “liberal” academician has a relatively easy time, and the con-
servative a very difficult one, getting a grant from one of these or-
ganizations. True, a conservative academician may still write as
he pleases and speak as he pleases, but research costs money; the
preparation and publication of written works costs money; and
professors usually are poor men. If “liberals” are heavily sub-
sidized, and subsidization is denied their opposite numbers, a
form of suppression occurs which no one can justify in a public
trust.

Were this situation reversed, were the foundations in question
to favor conservatives and to exclude "liberals,” the Americans for
Democratic Action, the American Civil Liberties Union, the prop-
aganda agencies of organized labor, the “liberal” press, the “lib-
eral” publishing industry in general would speak up in no uncer-
tain terms. These are silent now.

As I have said earlier, this book is no plea to convert the “liberal”
preponderance within major foundations and their associated or-
ganizations into a “conservative” preponderance. It is a plea to
foundation trustees to make certain that the organizations they
manage operate with complete political disinterest. The privilege
of tax exemption is justified whenever a foundation confines itself
to truly educational, scientific, or other nonpolitical activities.
When it reaches clearly into politics, the tax exemption is not
justified. There is a borderline, very difficuk to delineate, of
course, in which there is uncertainty. This uncertainty does not
necessarily mean that inquiries and action even in these border
fields are inadvisable. But it suggests greater caution. It calls for
wisdom. It calls for the perspicacity and willingness to avoid a

FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS 297

hortatory and partisan advocacy of political goals and to stick to
an objective presentation of facts, figures and ideas.

If the foundation is merely a granting foundation, confining it-
self to institutional grantees and making no attempt to say what
the donee institutions are to use the giants for, it would make lit-
tle difference what the political complexion of its executives might
be. Or if the foundation confines itself to areas of activity in which
political connotations are absent, it would be of little consequence
whether its executives were predominantly conservatives or radi-
cals. Where, however, the foundation determines the lines of in-
quiry to which its funds are to be applied and these touch social
areas in which political predilection could play a part, then it be-
comes of the greatest importance for the trustees to assure them-
selves that the executives they employ act without political bias.

This requires extraordinary alertness. It also requires a careful
scrutiny of the foundation's employees to make sure that there is at
least a balance of political predilection, set up in such a way as to
create an effective objectivity of result. This is not merely a matter
of balance in numbers. One or two Communists in strategic posts
in a cabinet have been able to pave the way for the absorption of
a nation into communism. One or two political-minded founda-
tion executives, placed in strategic posts within the organization,
can turn it to active and effective political use.

In his Philanthropic Foundations ,* Mr. E. Emerson Andrews
suggests that foundations should

(i) before voting a grant, make certain of the integrity and
competence of the persons involved, the responsibility of the
organization, and the worth of the project; (2) after voting
the grant, make no attempt to influence appointments or in-
ternal policy of the organization, avoid membership on its
board, and give counsel only if asked; (3) when requesting
financial and progress report, avoid any suspicion of control
over the nature of findings or their distribution.

•p. 223.

298 FROM HERE ON?

He adds:

In the unlikely case of complete misapplication of funds or
other malfeasance, discontinuance of further payments or ac-
tion for recovery is warranted.

With all this I agree, but it does not finish the story of the duty
of trustees in connection with grants. I believe it to be the duty of
trustees to examine the product to determine whether it has (a)
been produced with bias, and (b) has materially affected our
society, or could so affect it. The purpose would be to decide
whether corrective action is indicated. Such action might take the
form of a public repudiation of the product in some instances — a
broadcast notice to the public that the foundation which made it
possible does not support what its money misproduced. In most
instances corrective relief would call for the financing of a coun-
terproject to create at least a balance.

Had The Carnegie Corporation, for instance, adopted such a
procedure in the case of the report of the Commission on Social
Studies of The American Historical Association, much damage to
our educational system could have been avoided. These com-
ments apply, clearly enough, wherever the subject matter touches
“controversy.”

Mr. Andrews repeats his position regarding responsibility in an
introduction to The Public Accountability of Foundations and
Charitable Trusts* by Eleanor Taylor. He speaks of the inade-
quacies of much foundation reporting, expresses concern over the
possibility of restrictive legislation which might harm all founda-
tions, and affirms that it is “wholly proper that the foundation or
trust should be held accountable for its stewardship.” However,
along with the author of the book, he used the term “accountabil-
ity” strictly in a financial sense. He says: “Society should have the
means of protecting itself against the theft, squandering, or unrea-
sonable withholding of the promised” benefits intended for the
general welfare. He says: “The operations of the exempt organiza-
tions should be fully and regularly reported with adequate provi-

# Ruwcll Sage Foundation, 1953.

FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS 299

sion for review by a public authority possessing power to correct
abuses. This constitutes accountability."

But Mr. Andrews does not support any form of "control" other
than financial auditing. He demands "real freedom" for the givers
of funds and the administrators who manage them. He deems
this especially important in the field of the social sciences. He is
all for the "venture-capital" theory, and he wants no "control"
over the freedom of ventures. What Mr. Andrews, and those who
think like him, do not see is the logical weakness of their proposed
distinction between "accountability" (as they define it, limiting it
virtually to a statement of what they have paid to whom and for
what projects) and "control."

The true measure of "accountability" is not merely proof of
what they have done with the money entrusted to them. Those to
whom they have the duty to account surely must have the right to
know not only how the money was spent, and whether or not some
of it was dissipated, but also what the theory, objectives, and re-
sults of the expenditures have been. "Control” could take the form
of the right of censorship or penalty or remedial relief after the
act, exercised by governmental authority, of course. But that is not
part of the concept of "accountability" which I maintain should be
applied. "Accountability" in its true sense should be to the public,
the beneficiary of the trust which a foundation admittedly repre-
sents; and the public has the right to know how the managers and
operators of a foundation have interpreted their trust duty.

Accountability for financial propriety alone is not enough to
protect the public against abuses of substantive power. There is
need for a form of accountability which will protect the people in
the areas of intellectual concern; to insure that nothing has been
done to curb true academic freedom; to make certain that the free
competition of ideas has not been impaired; to see that the rights
of the nonconformist have been protected.

The foundation needs to look closely at what its financing has
produced. It needs to explain or expose publicly what motivated
its selections and to explain also how, in so selecting, it was alert to
the necessity of preventing bias and of promoting objectivity. It

300 FROM HERE ON?

needs, further, to renounce publicly that which has turned out
misbegotten and to announce and take such steps as might rea-
sonably be necessary, and are feasible, to correct any damage
which has been done. If this process, which begins to effect true
public "accountability,” is generally adopted by foundations, no
movement for government intervention would collect any substan-
tial support. The very process of self-audit, combined with the
resultant public accounting, should quickly enough correct errors
of management.

The foundations which are bent on a public mission should be
grateful for any public scrutiny of their deeds and of the signifi-
cance of their actions. In the absence of controlling authority,
public scrutiny alone can supply them with sound yardsticks of
performance. It is my hope that, in the constant adjustment of so-
cial institutions, to which foundations are as subject as other
bodies of men, the stimulus of outside criticism will, in the end,
prove to be a most constructive contribution to their work.

APPENDIX A

FINDINGS AND CONCLUDING
OBSERVATIONS OF THE
REECE COMMITTEE

THE FINDINGS

THE COMMITTEE FINDS AS FOLLOWS:

l. The country is faced with a rapidly increasing birth-rate of foun-
dations. The compelling motivation behind this rapid increase in
numbers is tax planning rather than “charity." The possibility exists
that a large part of American industry may eventually come into the
hands of foundations. This may perpetuate control of individual en-
terprises in a way not contemplated by existing legislation, in the
hands of closed groups, perhaps controlled in turn by families. Be-
cause of the tax exemption granted them, and because they must be
dedicated to public purposes, the foundations are public trusts, ad-
ministering funds of which the public is the equitable owner. How-
ever, under the present law there is little implementation of this re-
sponsibility to the general welfare; the foundations administer their
capital and income with the widest freedom, bordering at times on
irresponsibility. Wide freedom is highly desirable, as long as the pub-
lic dedication is faithfully followed. But, as will be observed later, the
present laws do not compel such performance.

The increasing number of foundations presents another problem.
The Internal Revenue Service is not staffed to adequately scrutinize
the propriety and legality of the work of this ever-enlarging multitude
of foundations.

2. Foundations are clearly desirable when operating in the natural
sciences and when making direct donations to religious, educational,

301

302 APPENDIX A: FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

scientific, and other institutional donees. However, when their activi-
ties spread into the field of the so-called “social sciences” or into other
areas in which our basic moral, social, economic, and governmental
principles can be vitally affected, the public should be alerted to these
activities and be made aware of the impact of foundation influence on
our accepted way of life.

3. The power of the individual large foundation is enormous. It
can exercise various forms of patronage which carry with them ele-
ments of thought control. It can exert immense influence on educa-
tional institutions, upon the educational processes, and upon educa-
tors. It is capable of invisible coercion through the power of its purse.
It can materially predetermine the development of social and political
concepts and courses of action through the process of granting and
withholding foundation awards upon a selective basis, and by design-
ing and promulgating projects which propel researchers in selected
directions. It can play a powerful part in the determination of aca-
demic opinion, and, through this thought leadership, materially in-
fluence public opinion.

4. This power to influence national policy is amplified tremen-
dously when foundations act in concert. There is such a concentration
of foundation power in the United States, operating in the social sci-
ences and education. It consists basically of a group of major founda-
tions, representing a gigantic aggregate of capital and income. There
is no conclusive evidence that this interlock, this concentration of
power, having some of the characteristics of an intellectual cartel,
came into being as the result of an over-all, conscious plan. Never-
theless, it exists. It operates in part through certain intermediary or-
ganizations supported by the foundations. It has ramifications in
almost every phase of research and education, in communications and
even in government. Such a concentration of power is highly unde-
sirable, whether the net result of its operations is benign or not.

5. Because foundation funds are public funds, the trustees of these
organizations must conscientiously exercise the highest degree of fidu-
ciary responsibility. Under the system of operation common to most
large foundations this fiduciary responsibility has been largely abdi-
cated, and in two ways. First, in fact if not in theory, the trustees
have all too frequently passed solely upon general plans and left the
detailed administration of donations (and the consequent selection
of projects and grantees) to professional employees. Second, these trus-

THE FINDINGS 303

tecs have all too often delegated much of their authority and function
to intermediary organizations.

6. A professional class of administrators of foundation funds has
emerged, intent upon creating and maintaining personal prestige and
independence of action, and upon preserving its position and emolu-
ments, This informal “guild” has already fallen into many of the vices
of a bureaucratic system, involving vast opportunities for selective
patronage, preference and privilege. It has already come to exercise a
very extensive, practical control over most research in the social sci-
ences, much of our educational process, and a good part of govern-
ment administration in these and related fields. The aggregate
thought-control power of this foundation and foundation-supported
bureaucracy can hardly be exaggerated. A system has thus arisen
(without its significance being realized by foundation trustees) which
gives enormous power to a relatively small group of individuals, hav-
ing at their virtual command, huge sums in public trust funds. It is a
system which is antithetical to American principles.

7. The far-reaching power of the large foundations and of the inter-
lock, has so influenced the press, the radio, and even the government
that it has become extremely difficult for objective criticism of founda-
tion practices to get into news channels without having first been dis-
torted, slanted, discredited, and at times ridiculed. Nothing short of an
unhampered Congressional investigation could hope to bring out the
vital facts; and the pressure against Congressional investigation has
been almost incredible. As indicated by their arrogance in dealing
with this Committee, the major foundations and their associated inter-
mediary organizations have intrenched themselves behind a totality of
power which presumes to place them beyond serious criticism and at-
tack.

8. Research in the social sciences plays a key part in the evolution
of our society. Such research is now almost wholly in the control of the
professional employees of the large foundations and their obedient
satellites. Even the great sums allotted by the Federal government for
social science research have come into the virtual control of this pro-
fessional group.

g. This power team has promoted a great excess of empirical re-
search, as contrasted with theoretical research. It has promoted what
has been called an irresponsible “fact finding mania.” It is true that a
balanced empirical approach is essential to sound investigation. But

304 APPENDIX Ai FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

It is equally true that if it is not sufficiently balanced and guided by
the theoretical approach, it leads all too frequently to what has been
termed "scientism” or fake science, seriously endangering our society
upon subsequent general acceptance as “scientific” fact. It is not the
part of Congress to dictate methods of research, but an alertness by
foundation trustees to the dangers of supporting unbalanced and un*
scientific research is clearly indicated.

10. Associated with the excessive support of the empirical method,
the concentration of power has tended to support the dangerous "cul-
tural lag” theory and to promote “moral relativity,” to the detriment
of our basic moral, religious, and governmental principles. It has
tended to support the concept of “social engineering” — that “social
scientists” and they alone are capable of guiding us into better ways
of living and improved or substituted fundamental principles of ac«
tion.

11. Accompanying these directions in research grants, the concen-
tration has shown a distinct tendency to favor political opinions to the
left. These foundations and their intermediaries engage extensively in
political activity, not in the form of direct support of political candi-
dates or political parties, but in the conscious promotion of carefully
calculated political concepts. The qualitative and quantitative restric-
tions of the Federal law are wholly inadequate to prevent this mis-use
of public trust funds.

i«. The impact of foundation money upon education has been very
heavy, largely tending to promote uniformity in approach and method,
tending to induce the educator to become an agent for social change
and a propagandist for the development of our society in the direction
of some form of collectivism. Foundations have supported text books
(and books intended for inclusion in collateral reading lists) which
are destructive of our basic governmental and social principles and
highly critical of some of our cherished institutions.

ig. In the international field, foundations, and an interlock among
some of them and certain intermediary organizations, have exercised a
strong effect upon our foreign policy and upon public education in
things international. This has been accomplished by vast propaganda,
by supplying executives and advisers to government and by control-
ling much research in this area through the power of the purse. The net
result of these combined efforts has been to promote “international-
ism” in a particular sense — a form directed toward “world govern-

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 305

merit” and a derogation of American "nationalism" Foundations
have supported a conscious distortion of history, propagandized
blindly for the United Nations as the hope of the world, supported
that organization's agencies to an extent beyond general public ac-
ceptance, and leaned toward a generally "leftist" approach to interna-
tional problems.

14. With several tragically outstanding exceptions, such as The In-
stitute of Pacific Relations, foundations have not directly supported
organizations which, in turn, operated to support Communism. How-
ever, some of the larger foundations have directly supported "sub-
version” in the true meaning of that term, namely, the process of un-
dermining some of our vitally protective concepts and principles.
They have actively supported attacks upon our social and govern-
mental system and financed the promotion of socialism and collectivist
ideas.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS-SOME SUPPLEMENTAL COMMENTS

THE PROBLEM OF FOUNDATION SURVIVAL

A number of foundations have complained bitterly about a "second”
investigation, bemoaning the inconvenience of repeated inquiries,
Whatever the inconvenience, this Committee urgently recommends a
continued inquiry. The fullest possible study is necessary adequately
to expose certain weaknesses and errors of operation, the failure to
recognize which might, some day, result in a growing movement to
destroy the foundation as an institution by wholly denying it tax ex-
emption.

There are many today who believe that foundations should not be
permitted. Among them are one group of advocates of "state plan-
ning," who take the position that all the functions now performed by
foundations should be in government control; that foundations pre-
vent the over-all coordinated planning in Washington which, they say,
should be our goal. Others feel that the privilege of giving away the
public's money (tax-exempt money) should not be subject to the idio-
syncrasy of the donor or the disposition of a self-perpetuating group of
foundation managers. There are others who resent, on a simple moti-
vation of human envy, the presence of great sums of money segregated
to the directed desires of some person of great wealth,

306 APPENDIX At FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

None of these points of view are received sympathetically by this
Committee .

There is another group, however, which says that nothing would be
lost by abolishing foundations, except factors which are undesirable
or unpleasant. That is, they say, a donor could still make all the
charitable donations he wished, by conferring his benefactions on ex-
isting institutions such as colleges and universities, hospitals, churches,
etc. He could still get the same tax benefit for himself and for his es-
tate, and save the equity control of a business for his family through
such transfers. He could give himself the same egotistical satisfaction,
if that is important to him, by attaching his name to a fund. He
could even designate a purpose for which a recipient college, for ex-
ample, must use his grant. He could even attach reasonable condi-
tions and restrictions to his gifts.

All that would thus be lost by abolishing foundations, say these
critics, would be (i) the inability to use a foundation itself as a vehi-
cle for maintaining control or partial control of a business and (2)
the inability to insist upon the management of the fund through fam-
ily members or other self-perpetuating, designated persons. We would
thus stiil have the equivalent of foundations, but they would be ad-
ministered by universities and other responsible institutions instead of
by those appointed by a miscellaneously selected board of private
trustees and by “clearing houses/'

This argument cannot be lightly dismissed. Nor can it be defeated
by the insistence that foundation funds are most valuable as “risk
capital." If the risk capital theory is sound, would it not be a safer
“risk" to society to have such funds administered by responsible uni-
versity trustees? The delineation of scope of purpose in a deed of gift
could very easily warrant the taking of reasonable “risks."

While we recognize the weight of these arguments , we do not sup -
port the proposal that foundations be abolished or refused Federal
tax exemption. One reason is that foundations are generally creatures
of state law and it does not seem to us that the Federal government
should, through the power of its taxing arm, virtually prevent the
states from retaining the foundation as a permissible institution if
they wish to.

Another reason is that some foundations have accomplished so much
that is good. Institutions which are capable of doing for the American
people the magnificent things which foundations have been responsi-

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 307

ble for, in medicine, public health and elsewhere, indicate that they
should be saved if they can be. But the foundations cannot rest on
their beneficial accomplishments alone. Not only must their balance
sheets show a preponderance of good— that preponderance must be
truly overwhelming. That they have improved the public health, for
example, cannot ofTset that they have permitted themselves to be used
to undermine our society and some of our most precious basic con-
cepts and principles.

If they are to be permitted to continue and to wield the tremendous
power which they now exercise, it must be upon the basis of complete
public acceptance — because they will have committed mere venial
sins and not mortal ones. For this reason we so strongly advocate the
most complete possible airing of criticism and the most thorough pos-
sible assembling of facts. In no other way can foundation trustees
come to realize the full degree of their responsibility, nor the extent
of the dangers which they must avoid to prevent foundation destruc-
tion.

THE PROPOSED CONTINUED INQUIRY

Various suggestions have been made as to the proper or most ad-
visable vehicle for a continued inquiry. One is that a permanent sub-
committee of Ways and Means be created to complete the investiga-
tion and to act as a permanent "watch-dog.” Another is that the
whole problem be turned over to the Joint Committee on Internal
Revenue Taxation. A third is that something in the nature of a Brit-
ish "royal commission" be created. Whatever the means used, we urge
that the investigation be retained under the control of the legislative
branch of the government, where it belongs.

How should that continued inquiry be conducted? We have pointed
out that such an inquiry is primarily a matter of laborious research.
Facts are best secured by this method, rather than through the exami-
nation and cross-examination of a parade of witnesses.

Some foundation spokesmen have alluded to "Committee witnesses"
and "foundation witnesses" in connection with the current investiga-
tion. There has been no such division of witnesses. All who came, or
were to come, before us were, or were to be, "Committee witnesses."
What these foundation spokesmen have attempted to do is give this
proceeding the character of a trial, rather than an investigation. It has
been no trial, and could not be.

308 APPENDIX As FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

There has been a growing insistence on the part of some groups of
extreme '‘liberals” that Congressional investigations be changed in
character to approach very closely to trial practice. Such suggestions
fly in the very face of the nature of Congressional investigations and
seek to undermine the independence of the legislative arm of the gov-
ernment by depriving it of the right to unhampered inquiry.

The use of a trial method, with complaint, answer, reply, rebuttal,
surrebuttal, etc., as to each issue, would mean utter confusion and
make of each investigation an endless “circus/*

This Committee has been much maligned, in part by the press and
by foundation spokesmen, because it first placed critical witnesses on
the stand. This was done, with the unanimous approval of the full
Committee, in order to be utterly fair to the foundations by letting
them know, in advance of their own expected appearances, the main
lines of inquiry which were to be followed. This was explained re-
peatedly by the Chairman and by Counsel, and appears in the record
again and again. In the face of these statements foundation spokes-
men, echoed by parts of the press inimical to this investigation for
whatever reasons of their own, have cried "unfair!”

The insistence on something close to trial practice is illustrated by a
telegram from The Rockefeller Foundation to the Committee which
says:

"We must assume that the Committee's decision [to discontinue the
hearings] means that it will not submit a report to the Congress con-
taining any material adverse to our foundation on which we are not
fully heard.” (Hearings, p. 10G2.)

This statement is made as though this condition were advanced as a
matter of right. We reject it emphatically. We are not “trying” the
foundations; we are investigating them. To require us, in advance of a
report, to submit to a foundation every piece of evidence or comment
which our staff may have collected would be an absurdity, hampering
a committee such as this to the point of destroying its effectiveness.

The Rockefeller Foundation statement goes even further than de-
manding to see every piece of material which might be used in criti-
cism of it. It says: “We suggest that the Committee insure this [refrain-
ing from unfairly injuring the foundations] by affording the founda-
tions an opportunity to be heard on the draft of any report which the

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 309

Committee proposes to submit.” That is both intolerable arrogance
and an absurdity. Perhaps this will be added to the list of tilings
which the advanced “liberals” are asking of Congressional procedure
— that no Congressional committee be permitted to file any report
until all persons interested have had an opportunity to see it in draft
and comment upon it to the committee!

Such procedure, aside from its interference with the independence
of Congress, would involve the endless protraction of investigations,
In our case, for example, there are some seven thousand foundations.
Does Mr. Rusk, who signed the Rockefeller statement, believe that
only The Rockefeller Foundation should have the right of examina-
tion? Or does lie believe all foundations should have that right? Does
he suggest they be called in one by one, or all in a group? The impos-
sibility of his suggestion is obvious enough. And how about the cost?
We have heard no foundation voice raised to assist this Committee in
securing adequate financing.

THE A TTITUDE OF THE FO UNDATIONS

United States News and World Report of October 22, 1954* page
104, contains excerpts from an article in Harper's Magazine for Febru-
ary* concerning Congressional investigations, written by Su-
preme Court Justice Hugo L. Black. Justice Black describes how
pressure against an investigation commences before the investigation
even begins.

At the first suggestion of an investigation the ever-busy, cease-
lessly vigilant Washington lobby sounds the alarm/'

The instant a "resolution is offered, or even rumored, the call to arms
is sounded by the interest to be investigated/'

“High-priced political lawyers swarm into the Capitol. Lobby-
ists descend upon members. Telegrams of protest come from citi-
zens back home protesting against the suggested infamy,”

Certain newspapers can generally be depended upon to raise a cry
against the proposed investigation, The opposition does not end when
a resolution passes; the next step is to try to influence appointments
to the Committee. Finally, pressure is put upon the controlling legis-
lative Committee to restrict the activities of the investigating commit-*
tee by limiting its funds,

310 APPENDIX A; FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

Justice Black's article is worth reading. It goes on to describe the
difficulties which confront Congressional investigations when they do
get under way.

Unfortunately this Committee concludes that some of the founda-
tions have followed the traditional course which Justice Black de-
scribed as taken by "the interest to be investigated." Nor have we been
impressed with the general willingness of foundations to submit their
performance to public scrutiny.

This Committee can judge the attitude only of those foundations
with which it has had intimate contact. These, as well as the “clearing
house" organizations, have been fully cooperative in supplying in-
formation. Both groups, however, have demonstrated an intolerance
toward criticism. This unwillingness even to consider that they might,
in any respect, be guilty of serious error, we find distressing and dis-
couraging. We can only conclude that it emanates from a sense of
power and security, even vis-a-vis the Congress. Some of the founda-
tions have gone so far as to imply that it is an injustice for Congress to
investigate any complaint against them.

They have filled their statements with cliche material regarding the
desirability of "free speech," and "freedom of thought," and “aca-
demic freedom" as though they had a monopoly on the defense of free-
dom and there were serious danger that Congress might unfairly cur-
tail it. A form of arrogance and a pretension to superiority leads them
to believe that critics must, per se, be wrong. Foundations are sacred
cows. The men who run them are above being questioned. This
Committee, continues their general attitude, is bent upon the destruc-
tion of the sacred right of foundations to do as they please; it is full
of malice; its staff is manned with incompetents who have called in
incompetents as witnesses; no one who criticizes a foundation could be
competent.

One gathers the impression from some of the filed statements that
the foundation officers who have signed them believe that they have a
vested and inalienable right to do as they please, and that it is an
outrage that a Congressional Committee should dare to question any
of their actions. The fact is that they have a limited privilege — limited
by what the public may determine is for its own good; and the public,
in this sense, is represented by the Congress.

This Committee has even been attacked by foundations which it
has not investigated in any detail. Several such attacks, for example,

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 311

have been launched by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith,
one appearing in its October, 1954, Bulletin , which, begins by an-
nouncing— before the completion of our investigation, that it has
failed. The lengthy article refers to the Committee members and staff
as "actors" in a "charade,” and refers to the witnesses called by the
Committee as "a strange group." It is replete with vituperation and
prejudges in vicious manner before the publishing of a report upon
which alone any final judgment of this Committee's work could be
made. The concluding sentence of die article is:

"Its failure as a Congressional investigation is a great victory
for the American people,”

There can be no possible justification for such an attack by a tax ex-
empt organization in the course of a Congressional investigation.

This Committee is quite conscious of the possibility that it may itself
have erred in some facts or in some judgments. Unlike some of the
foundation-supported social scientists and some of the foundation ex-
ecutives (to judge them from their own statements) we do npt con-
sider ourselves Olympian. It is partly for this reason that we strongly
recommend a completion of the project of an investigation of founda-
tions— so that all possible facts in the criticized areas may be adduced
which might be favorable to them. Based on an incomplete inquiry, all
final conclusions are subject to possible revision.

On the other hand, we are quite shocked that some of the founda-
tions have presumed to imply malice and an intention by this Com-
mittee to do a biased and prejudiced job. We should like to print in
full the initial report prepared by Counsel to the Committee under
date of October 23, 1953, outlining his proposals for the conduct of
the work. It is a measured, objective and thoroughly unprejudiced
document running to 22 pages, the result of extremely careful
thought; it formed the basis upon which the Committee built its opera-
tions. We shall quote merely part of it to indicate the attitude which
this Committee has had in its work.*

“Control as a Basic Problem. This brings us to the basic con-
trol problem. We would assume that the Committee would be
disposed to a minimum of Federal control. The rights, duties
and responsibilities of foundations are, in our opinion, primarily

• See Appendix C.

312 APPENDIX Ai FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

matters of state law with which the Federal government should
not interfere unless grounds of national welfare, strong enough to
induce an application of a broad Federal constitutional theory,
Should appear. For the moment, then, the only available mech-
anism of control available to the Congress is the tax law. Con-
gress has the dear right to place reasonable conditions upon the
privilege of tax exemption. It has done so, as to income tax, gift
tax and estate tax. If amendments to these tax laws come to
appear desirable it is the province of the Committee on Ways
and Means, as we understand it, to consider such amendments.
We conceive our function in part to be to produce the facts
upon which that Committee may, if it chooses, act further. We
deem it within our province to state the facts which have ap-
peared, collate them, and suggest areas of consideration for Ways
and Means if the Committee finds this desirable.

“If acute or chronic foundation ailments should appear, the
remedies may not, in every case, be through legislation. A dis-
closure of the ailments may, to some extent, induce reform
within the ailing foundation itself. And the very statement of
the facts may induce the public to take an interest of a nature
to bring about reform through the force of public opinion ”

This measured language does not indicate an intention to "rail-
road” the foundations or to impose restrictions on them which might,
as some of the foundations purport to fear, destroy their usefulness.
To quote once more from this initial and guiding report of Counsel:

"Starting with the premise that foundations are basically de-
sirable, excessive regulation, which would deprive them virtually
of all freedom, might well destroy their character, their useful-
ness and their desirability. Therefore, regulatory measures should
be approached with great caution. We are not prepared at this
time even to suggest that further regulation is needed. It seems
essential to us that as scientific a collection and integration of
facts as possible be accomplished before anyone, whether in this
Committee or outside, arrives at any precise conclusions."

This is the spirit in which this Committee started its work and in
which it has continued through the preparation of this report .

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 313

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS NOT FULLY COVERED
IN THE PREVIOUS TEXT

We shall not burden this already lengthy report with a repetition of
all the various observations, conclusions and recommendations stated
in its course. Because of the incompleteness of the inquiry, we have
been disinclined to arrive at many final and fixed recommendations.
We shall, however, discuss briefly some features of foundation opera-
tion which seem to require additional or fresh comment,

THE JURISDICTION OF WAYS AND MEANS

Wherever suggestions are made herein for possible changes in the
tax laws, we are mindful of the superior jurisdiction of the Commit-
tee on Ways and Means and respectfully offer such suggestions to that
Committee for its consideration,

REFORM FROM WITHIN THE FOUNDATIONS

This Committee has never swerved from the concept laid out in
the initial report of Counsel to it that whatever reform of foundation
procedure is necessary should, if possible, come from within the
foundations themselves. We are not overly encouraged, from the con-
tent and import of the statements filed by some of the foundations,
and their general attitude, that much willingness exists among execu-
tives of the foundations and of the associated organizations to institute
any reform whatsoever. A prerequisite to such reform from the inside
would lie in a recognition that it is needed. If these foundations and
organizations persist in their attitude that they are sacrosanct, that
they have not committed and cannot commit any serious errors, and
that they, therefore, need no reform whatsoever, then Congressional ac-
tion in various directions seems inevitably necessary, even to the pos-
sible extent of a complete denial of tax exemption.

LIMITATIONS ON OPERATING COSTS

Suggestions have been made that die operating cost of foundations
is sometimes excessive, resulting in a waste of public funds. There is
much to this allegation, particularly in the case of heavily staffed foun-
dations with complex machinery of operation, and those which dou-
ble overhead by using intermediary organizations to distribute some

314 APPENDIX Ai FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

of their funds. There seems to be no reasonable way, however, to con-
trol such waste through any form of regulation. It is our opinion
that this is one of the areas in which reform from the inside is the
only kind possible. We urge foundation trustees to consider it care-
fully.

"COLLECTING” FOUNDATIONS

Special attention might be given to abuses by foundations used for
the purpose of collecting money from the public. These have been ex-
tensively investigated in the State of New York and elsewhere, and or-
ganizations like the National Better Business Bureau can supply
much data concerning them. The chief complaint against many of
these organizations is that their costs of operation often far exceed the
net amount available for distribution to "charities.0 Legislation to
protect the public against abuses of foundations of this type is possi-
ble, perhaps in the form of a limitation on a percentage of permitted
overhead. This Committee has not had time, however, to study this
specific problem nor did it feel it advisable to duplicate any of the
work done, for example, by the investigation in the State of New
York.

WASTE IN GENERAL

The evidence indicates that there is a good deal of waste in the selec-
tion of projects, particularly mass research projects in which large sums
are expended, and the services of a substantial number of researchers
employed, when the end to be achieved does not measure favorably
against the aggregate expenditure of valuable manpower and of
money. This error seems to us often to relate to an excessive interest
in empirical research. The services of ten or more researchers might
be used to assemble “facts” on some narrow subject when the same
money spent on this piece of mass-fact-production could support those
ten or more men, each in valuable, independent research. It would
not be difficult, for example, to find a better use for $250,000 than the
mass research on the Taiping Rebellion concerning which Professor
Rowe testified. We urge foundation trustees, who alone can prevent
such waste, to scrutinize carefully the proposed end-objective of any
suggested research project involving possible waste of manpower and
public funds. We suggest to them, further, that foundation money is
precious; that the capacity to distribute it is not a right but a privi-

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 315

lege, a privilege granted by the people — that, therefore, waste should
be avoided even more strictly than in the use of one's personal funds.

DEFINING FOUNDATIONS

In order that statistical material of great value may be produced by
the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and so that special rules might be
applied to foundations (and "clearing house” organizations) as dis-
tinguished from the miscellany of organizations included within the
scope of Section tot (6) (now 501 [c] [3]) of the Code, we suggest
that the Committee on Ways and Means consider a division of that
section into two parts.

INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE MANPOWER

It is the opinion of this Committee that, although complete observa-
tion of foundation activity by the Internal Revenue Service is impossi-
ble, the subject is of sufficient social importance to warrant an in-
crease in the manpower of the pertinent department of the Bureau to
enable it more closely to watch foundation activity.

FULL PUBLIC ACCESS TO FORM 990A

We consider it an absurdity that the public docs not have open ac-
cess to the full reports filed by the foundations and known as Form
990A. Why any part of the activity or operation of a foundation, a
public body, should not be open to the public eye, we cannot under-
stand.

A “R ULE A GAINST PERPETUITIES”

Many have urged that a "rule against perpetuities" be applied to
foundations in the form of an aggregate limit on life of, say, from ten
to twenty-five years. We strongly support this proposal. It should be
applied primarily to foundations and other non-institutional organiza-
tions whose sole or chief function is distributing grants. Some operat-
ing research organizations might, possibly, be exempted from the rule
and classed with institutional organizations such as colleges, universi-
ties, hospitals, churches, etc. And careful study may disclose other
types of foundations which might be excluded from the proposed limi-
tation on length of existence. It would not be easy to define these
classes or to draw die lines of demarcation; but the difficulty of delin-
eation should not prevent the undertaking.

316 APPENDIX A» FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

Measures to forestall evasion would have to be considered. For ex-
ample, a foundation, shortly before its duration-expiration, might pass
its assets to another foundation created for the purpose or having sim-
ilar objectives and management. There are other problems requiring
difficult study. But it seems wise to proscribe perpetual foundations of
the general class. This would minimize the use of the mechanism to
enable a family to continue control of enterprises ad infinitum ; avoid
the calcification which sometimes sets in on foundations; and, among
other desirable objectives, minimize the seriousness of the danger that
a foundation might, in some future period, pass into die control of
persons whose objectives differed materially from those which the
creator of die foundation intended,

ACCUMULATIONS

Foundations may not accumulate income "unreasonably.” The per-
tinent provision of the tax law is analogous to Section 102 applying
to ordinary corporations, and has a sound principle behind it. Yet it
seems to us to sometimes work out unhappily. Foundations should not
be overly-pressed to distribute their income, lest they do so casually or
recklessly. We suggest, therefore, that this rule be changed so that;

1, a foundation be given a period of two or three years within
which to distribute each year's income, but that

$, within diat period, all of that year’s income be paid out,

If a "rule against perpetuities" were applied, our suggestion might be
that a foundation be given an even longer period of income accumu*
lation,

CAPITAL GAINS

With the objective of preventing any accumulations (beyond the
limits discussed above), we suggest that capital gains be treated as in-
come. That is, all capital gains realized should be subjected to the
same rule as to accumulations, as though they were ordinary income.
Whether or not capital losses should be allowed as an offset for the
purpose of treating accumulations is debatable.

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 317

RESTRICTIONS ON CORPORATION-CREATED FOUNDA-
TIONS

We have suggested that such foundations require the thorough
study which we have not been able to give them. We are not in a posi-
tion to make final recommendations. We do suggest that, while such
foundations seem entirely desirable, they should be subjected to some
restrictions which would prevent them from aggregating enormous cap*
ital funds with which they could (i) exercise powerful control of
enterprises through investment and (?) come to have a very strong
impact upon our society. One method might be to treat all donations
to such foundations as income for the purpose of compelling distribu-
tions and proscribing accumulations. That is, whatever rule is applied,
directed at the improper accumulation of income, should be applied
to a corporation's annual donations as though these were income to
the foundation.

NATIONAL INCORPORATION

It has been suggested that foundations be either compelled or per-
mitted to incorporate under Federal law. We adopt neither sugges-
tion. This Committee does not advocate any unnecessary extension of
Federal jurisdiction. Federal incorporation would have the advantage
of permitting regulations to be enacted on a broader base than the
tax law, But we feel that the further centralization of government
function would be an unhappy invasion of states’ rights.

RETROACTIVE LOSS OF EXEMPTIONS

This Committee has pointed out that, upon violation by a tax-ex-
empt organization of the rules of the tax law relating to subversion
and political activity, the only penalty is the future loss of income tax
exemption (and the corresponding right of future donors to take tax
deductions for gifts or bequests). We urgently recommend that means
be studied by which the initial gift tax and/or estate tax exemption,
granted upon the creation of the organization, may be withdrawn and
the tax due collected to the extent of the remaining assets of the or-
ganization. It impresses us as absurd that, having been guilty, for ex-
ample, of subversive activity, a foundation whose funds were per-
mitted to be set aside because of tax exemption, can go right on ex-
pending its capital for further subversion,

318 APPENDIX A: FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

REMOVAL OF TRUSTEES

A sensible alternative to the imposition of the retroactive penalty
described above, would be the immediate removal of the trustees or
directors. This is primarily a matter of state law, and the Federal gov-
ernment could not force such removal. It could, however, we believe,
provide that the retroactive penalty be assessed unless all the trustees
or directors forthwith resign and arrangements are made for the elec-
tion of directors appointed by a court or an agency of the state of in-
corporation or of the situs of the trust.

PUBLIC DIRECTORS

The suggestion has been made that each foundation should be re-
quired to have, upon its board, or as one of its trustees, a member
selected by a government agency, perhaps the state government. The
purpose of the suggestion is that the public would thus have a direct
representative who could watch the operations of the foundation
and take whatever action he might deem necessary if he found a viola-
tion of good practice or of law. The suggestion may have merit; it
may be well worth the consideration of the Committee on Ways and
Means.

REVOLVING DIRECTORATES

Directed against the calcification which may set in upon a founda-
tion, the suggestion has been made that a director or trustee be per-
mitted to sit upon a board for only a reasonably limited number of
years, after which he would be ineligible for reelection. This sugges-
tion also seems to have considerable merit, and may be worth the at-
tention of Ways and Means.

SELECTION OF WORKING TRUSTEES

We urge most strongly upon those who control the great founda-
tions, in particular, that they fill their boards with men who are will-
ing to take the time to do a full job of trust administration. This is
meant as no personal criticism of those many estimable men who sit
upon foundations boards. We have gone into this matter elsewhere
in this report. The president of a great corporation cannot possibly
give to the management of a foundation the time which should be re-
quired. Many of the weaknesses of foundation management might be

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 319

avoided if the trustees were selected from among men able and will-
ing to give a large amount of time to their work,

RELIEF FOR THE ALERT CITIZEN

As it is obvious that the Internal Revenue Service cannot, except at
prohibitive cost, follow the activities of the individual foundations to
ascertain whether violations of law exist, this Committee believes that
some additional method should be established to protect the people
against a misuse of the public funds which foundation money repre-
sents. An interesting suggestion has been made, which deserves care-
ful study, that legal procedure should be available in the Federal
courts under which a citizen could bring a proceeding to compel the
Attorney General to take action against a foundation upon a showing,
to the satisfaction of a Federal judge, that a prima facie or probable
cause exists.

PR O FI I BIT ED ABUSES

The Internal Revenue Code specially taxes “unrelated income*'
and proscribes certain transactions and uses of foundations. Among
them are the unreasonable accumulation of income and certain pro-
hibited transactions between the foundation and its creator or other
closely associated persons and corporations. Within the limitations of
time and funds faced by this Committee it did not feel warranted to
enter this area of research which is, in any event, peculiarly the
province of the Committee on Ways and Means. Doubtless certain
defects in the existing law covering these areas need attention, but
these must be left to consideration by the controlling Committee.

FOUNDATIONS USED TO CONTROL ENTERPRISES

One subject which does need careful consideration by the Congress
is the use now so frequently made of foundations to control businesses.
In an early section of this report we alluded to the extent to which
foundations are being currently created in order to solve estate and
business planning problems. We mentioned also the possibility that
so great a percentage of enterprises may, someday, come into the
hands of foundations that this very factor in itself may oblige legisla-
tive relief. We believe the Congress and the public should be sharply
aware of this factor of enterprise control through foundations; it has
already had some effect on our economy.

320 APPENDIX At FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

There is nothing now in the law prohibiting such control. A donor
or testator can transfer the controlling stock of an enterprise to a
foundation and it may hold it in perpetuity, its self-perpetuating di-
rectors or trustees voting the stock as they please. It is conceivable
that certain situations of a special character might be attacked by the
Internal Revenue Service. For example, if the continued holding of
one stock by a foundation seemed to prevent it from using its funds
to the best advantage in relation to its dedicated purposes, it is possi-
ble that a court might cut off its tax exemption. But such instances
would have to be extreme and irrefutably clear to promise relief. In
the ordinary case, nothing will interfere with the continued holding.
By the same token, foundations holding only a minority percentage of
the voting stock of a corporation can act in consort with other stock-
holders, perhaps of one family, to become part of a controlling group;
there is nothing in die law to prevent this either.

To prevent a foundation from receiving any substantial part of the
securities of an industrial enterprise would extremely limit the use of
the foundation mechanism for the solution of the problem of how to
meet the heavy death charges in estates whose assets consist chiefly of
securities in a closely held enterprise. On the other hand, the reten-
tion of a substantial holding in any enterprise may, in the long run,
operate against the general public interest. We are not absolute in
our conclusion, but suggest to the Committee on Ways and Means
that it consider the advisability of denying the tax exemption to any
foundation which holds more than five or ten per cent of its capital in
the securities of one enterprise- — and, in the case of an initial receipt
of such securities, it might be well to give the foundation a period of
two to five years within which to bring its holdings down to the pre-
scribed maximum level.

AREA EXCLUSIONS AND RESTRICTIONS

We qualifiedly support the theory of the foundations that their capi-
tal and income is often wisely used in “experimenting’' in areas which
die government or other private philanthropic organizations do not
enter — we support this theory, however, only as to such areas where
there is no grave risk to our body politic and to our form of society.
With this limitation, the theory of “risk capital'’ seems sound and its
observation accounts for many of the great boons to society for which

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 321

foundations have been responsible, particularly in medicine and pub-
lic health.

The question comes — should foundations be excluded from any spe-
cial fields, sucli as the social sciences? Some ask that they be restricted
to certain limited fields, such as religion, medicine, public health and
the physical sciences. We do not support this theory. We believe they
should be prohibited from using their funds for "subversive" pur-
poses and from all political use, and we shall discuss this further. Be-
yond that, we believe that foundations should have full freedom of
selection of areas of operation.

In giving them this freedom, there is a great risk of waste. This risk
must be taken at the alternative cost of such hampering of operations
through controls as to make foundation independence a virtual fic-
tion. But we urge again that foundation trustees exercise great care in
avoiding waste.

TYPE EXCLUSIONS

Suggestions have also been made that foundations be restricted in
various ways as to type of operation. These suggestions are of all
sorts, some of them conflicting:

That they should not be permitted to act as operating units;

That they should only be permitted to operate, and should not
be permitted merely to make grants;

That they should not be permitted to create subsidiaries,
affiliates or progeny foundations or operating units;

That they be permitted to make grants only to existing operat-
ing units of certain types, such as colleges, universities, hospitals,
churches, etc.;

That they be denied the right, in the social sciences, to attach
any condition to a grant, as to detail of operation, personnel,
etc,;

That they be excluded from grants to other foundations, in-
cluding “intermediary" organizations;

and many others.

If any of these and similar suggestions are to be considered, we rec-
ommend that this be done only after a truly complete investigation
has been had; and then only after the most careful study. It is the gen-

. 322 APPENDIX A: FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

eral position of this Committee that no restraints should be put upon
the operation of foundations which do not seem inevitably necessary
for the protection of our society.

PROTECTION AGAINST INTERLOCK

Many detailed suggestions have been made to prevent the growth
and even the continuance of the concentration of power to which we
have given considerable attention. These suggestions, for the most
part, should also await the completed study and should be ap-
proached with great care. Some of the intermediary organizations
should perhaps be continued, to go on with whatever valuable and
safe activities they now pursue; but efforts should be made to induce
or prevent them from acting in any coercive role, whether by inten-
tion or by the very nature of the structure of the foundation world.

Some few suggestions are, however, worthy of immediate considera-
tion. One is that no trustee, director or officer of any foundation or
intermediary organization be permitted to act as a trustee, director
or officer of another, except where members of constituent societies
may be associated with a parent body.

Another is that the fullest democracy be imposed on the election of
members of such associations of societies and similar organizations to
prevent the self-perpetuance which exists, for example, in the Social
Science Research Council.

For the moment, we believe that the problem of "power” urgently
demands the attention of foundation trustees. In order to escape an
eventual substantial curtailment of foundation independence, trustees
will have to understand how powerful their organizations arc and how
much care must be exercised so that no abuse of this power occurs.
They must also understand the terrific social impact which a concen-
tration of foundation power entails and avoid, like the plague, opera-
tions or associations which tend to coerce, or even carry the propensity
for coercing or in any way effecting, social controls, compulsions to-
ward uniformity or any form of pressure on society or on those who
are or are to become its intellectual leaders.

GREATER USE OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Among other approaches to the solution of the problems raised by a
concentration of power, this Committee urges trustees of foundations
more frequently to use colleges and universities as media for research

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 323

operations, suggesting further that grants to such institutions be made
as free as possible of conditions and limitations.

THE EXCESS OF EMPIRICISM

This Committee is entirely convinced by the evidence that the foun-
dations have been "sold" by some social scientists and employee-
executives on the proposition that empirical and mass research in the
social sciences is far more important than theoretical and individual
research, and should be supported with overwhelming preponderance.
We are conscious of the fact that Congress should not attempt to exert
any control over the selection of methods of research or the relative
distribution of foundation funds over various types. Nevertheless, this
Committee suggests that foundation trustees consider carefully and
objectively our conclusion, from the evidence, that an overindulgence
in empiricism has had results deleterious to our society, particularly in
subordinating basic and fundamental principles, religious, ethical,
moral and legal. In such consideration, we also suggest, as we have
previously in this report, that they consult not alone with their pro-
fessional employees who are the advocates of overwhelming empiri-
cism but also with those scholars and students who arc critical of the
preponderance.

POLITICAL USE AND PROPAGANDA

It is the opinion of this Committee that the wording of the tax law
regarding the prohibition of political activity of foundations should
be carefully re-examined. We recognize that it is extremely difficult to
draw the line between what should be permissible and what should
not. Nevertheless, the present rule, as interpreted by the courts, per-
mits far too much license. While further study may be indicated, we
are inclined to support the suggestion that the limiting conditions of
the present statute be dropped — those which restrict to the prohibition
of political activity “to influence legislation” and those which con-
demn only if a “substantial” part of the foundation’s funds are so
used. These restrictions make the entire prohibition meaningless. We
advocate the complete exclusion of political activity, leaving it to the
courts to apply the maxim of de minimis non curat lex . Carefully de-
vised exceptions to this general prohibition against political activity
might be made in the case of certain special types of organizations,
such as bar associations.

324 APPENDIX A; FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

Whatever the difficulties which foundations may face in determining
when a proposed activity may have political implications, we cannot
see any reason why public funds should be used when any political im-
pact may result,

LOBBYING

An astonishing number of tax-exempt foundations are registered as
lobbyists in Washington, Under the present law, it seems clear that
lobbying in itself is not held to be political activity of a type which
might deprive a foundation of its tax exemption. Moreover, registra-
tion may, in many instances, take place to protect the foundation
against a technical violation of the law requiring registration, when
the only activity approaching true lobbying may consist of merely
keeping an eye on developing legislation in some special field of inter-
est. Nevertheless, there is evidence to indicate that much true lobbying
goes on. The whole area needs investigation. Whether tax-exempt or-
ganizations should have the privilege of lobbying is at least extremely
doubtful.

SUBVERSION

The prohibition against the use of foundation funds to support
subversion also needs wholesale revision. As the law stands it is only
the support of Communism and Fascism which is prohibited. It may be
that the adequate revision of the law regarding political use would
suffice, but it is clear to us that all support of socialism, collectivism
or any other form of society or government which is at variance with
tire basic principles of ours should be proscribed. This subject, too,
requires considerable study. We well understand that some research
clearly not intended to have any political implication may, neverthe-
less, incidentally impinge on the political. We also understand that the
effect may relate to what is merely one facet of an aggregate of collec-
tivist thought. Yet we feel that the whole field of the social sciences is
of such a nature that "risk” is not desirable. As much as we support
taking "risks*' in the physical sciences, in medicine and public health
and other areas, it is clear to us that risks taken with our governmen-
tal, juridical or social system are undesirable. If there is a burden
placed on the foundations through the difficulty of drawing a line be-
tween what is in the broad sense ‘'subversive" or "political" and what

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 325

is not, it is better that the foundations suffer this burden than that
they take risks with our happiness and safety.

FOREIGN USE OF FOUNDATION FUNDS

In this area this Committee has not been able to do sufficient study
to come to a final evaluation. However, we offer this suggestion tenta-
tively and subject to further investigation of the extent and signifi-
cance of foreign grants and grants for foreign use — that such grants
be limited to ten per cent of the annual income of the foundation or,
if it is disbursing principal, ten per cent, in the aggregate, of its prin-
cipal fund. An exception should be made in the case of religious or-
ganizations, such as foreign missions, and perhaps in some other in-
stances of peculiar and historic nature*

FURTHER AREAS OF INVESTIGATION

We have limited ourselves in the scope of our inquiry, in order not
to scatter over the entire, gigantic field. We urge, however, that the
proposed continued inquiry cover those sections which we have per-
force omitted. Among them is that of organizations which have re-
ligious names, or some connection with religion or a religious group,
which have engaged in political activity. There is evidence that such
groups exist in all three major sects. The right of a minister, priest or
rabbi to engage in political activity is clear enough. When such ac-
tivity takes place, however, under the shelter of a tax-exempt organiza-
tion which is not in itself a church, we question its permissibility.

There are some special types of tax-exempt organizations which
seem to us seriously to need investigation. Among them are the co-
operative organizations, some of which seem to engage in political
activity and even to promote a form of collectivism. Some labor and
union organizations also might be studied to see if they have not
crossed the border from privilege to license in matters political.
Among unions, for example, there is the basic question whether dues
payable by the members should be used for political purposes which
the members have not authorized,

There are some special foundations or similar organizations to
which we have been able to give insufficient attention in some cases
and none in others. These should all be studied. Among those which
we have not heretofore mentioned (or mentioned only briefly) are
these:

326 APPENDIX A: FINDINGS OF REECE COMMITTEE

The Public Administration Clearing House;

The National Citizens Commission for Public Schools;

The Advertising Council;

The Great Boohs Foundation;

The American Heritage Council ;

The American Heritage Program of the American Library As-
sociation;

The American Foundation for Political Education;

The American Friends Service Committee;

The Institute of International Education .

Another special group requiring study is the so-called "accrediting1'
organizations. These (apparently tax-exempt) organizations are ex-
tra-governmental, yet they act, in effect, as comptrollers of education
to a considerable degree. For various reasons colleges, universities
and specialized schools and departments today require "accreditation,"
that is, approval of one or more of these organizations which presume
to set standards. Some of these accrediting organizations are supported
by foundations; through such support, they may well control them.
An incidental factor involved in this accrediting system imposed on
American education is its often substantial expense to the institutions
themselves. The Committee is informed that some colleges are obliged,
through this system, to pay as much as $20,000 per year to enable
them to stay in business. The standards set may perhaps in every in-
stance be beyond criticism, yet the system in itself is subject to ques-
tion in so far as it imposes on institutions standards set by private
organizations not responsible to the people or to government.

As we have been able to devote intensive study only to some of the
major foundations, we suggest that a selected number of the more
important foundations of what might be called the second rank in
size should be examined carefully. A study of these may produce type
or sampling material of great value in considering the over-all founda-
tion problems.

We have been unable to do much concerning small foundations
and their problems and difficulties. Some of these involve matters
which should be primarily the concern of the Internal Revenue Serv-
ice, but we have pointed out that its capacity for watching over the
foundation field to discover breaches of law and offensive practices
is very limited. A thorough study should, therefore, perhaps solicit

SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS 327

from the public complaints against smaller foundations, as well as
large, in order that studies may disclose what weaknesses exist in the
operation of these smaller organizations.

# * #

While this Committee has spent little time in investigating the
activities of foundations in the natural sciences on the ground that
their performance in this area has been subjected to very little criti-
cism, a continued inquiry might well give attention to this field in
relation to the problem of subversion. There is evidence that some
foundations and foundation-supported scientific enterprises have been
used by Communists, through a special form of infiltration which has
escaped the notice of those in control. Several important scientific
projects seem to have been so employed for Communist purposes.
They have become clearing centers for building up the reputation of
persons of hidden Communist persuasion and subsequently placing
these pseudo-scientists in situations where they are able to engage in
espionage. The process includes using the assistance of scientists who
are fellow-travellers or outright Communists to provide the material
which is then used by the infiltrate to establish his scientific reputation.
This is all done so adroitly that the foundations which support such
projects know nothing of it.

APPENDIX B

THE STORY OF THE
REECE COMMITTEE

PRELUDE ; THE CREATION OF THE COX COMMITTEE

On August i, 1951, in the 8and Congress, Congressman E. E. Cox
of Georgia, a Democrat, introduced a resolution in the House of Rep-
resentatives to direct a thorough investigation of foundations. In an
accompanying “extension of remarks"* he applauded foundations for
the work they had done in various areas of activity but asserted that,
of those which

had operated in the field of social reform and international re-
lations, many have brought down on themselves harsh and just
condemnation.

He cited foundation support of such men as Langston Hughes,
Hans Eisler, Louis Adamic, and Owen Lattimore. He named The
Rockefeller Foundation,

whose funds have been used to finance individuals and organ-
izations whose business it has been to get communism into the
private and public schools of the country, to talk down America
and to play up Russia # * # .

He cited the Guggenheim foundation, whose money

was used to spread radicalism throughout the country to an ex-
tent not excelled by any other foundation.

He listed The Carnegie Corporation, The Rosenwald Fund, and
Other foundations among those badly needing scrutiny. And he said:

* Congressional Record , April 1, 1951, p. A *5046.

328

CREATION OF COX COMMITTEE 329

There are disquieting evidences that at least a few of the foun* * * §
dations have permitted themselves to be infiltrated by men and
women who are disloyal to our American way of life. They
should be investigated and exposed to the pitiless light of public*
ity, and appropriate legislation should be framed to correct the
present situation.*

There had been much bitter criticism of foundation activity for
many years, and a Democratic Congressman had finally shown the
courage to bring the subject to Congressional attention.

His resolution was referred to the Rules Committee, on which he
was the ranking Democratic member, and was reported out by itf on
August 15, 1951, and referred to the House Calendar, but Mr. Cox
must have run into difficulties, for he never called it up for action by
the House.

The following year. Congressman Cox tried again. On March 10,
1952, he introduced an identical resolution} which was reported out
by the Rules Committee on March i8th.§ On April 4, it was called up
by Congressman Smith (Democrat) of Virginia, and a highly interest*
ing debate ensued on the fioor.ff Mr. Cox had criticized foundation
support of Langston Hughes, a Communist who achieved notoriety,
among other things, for his poem Good-bye Christ . Because Hughes
is a Negro, Mr. Cox was accused of racial prejudice. Because he had
criticized The Rosenwald Fund for having made grants to Commu*
nists, he was accused of anti-Semitism,

At the conclusion of the debate, however, the resolution passed.
The vote was:

Yeas 194 Democrats 100

Republicans 94

Nays 158 Democrats 88

Republicans 69
Independent 1

Not voting 78

• Congressional Record , August 1, 1951, p. A 5046.

fH. Res. 881.

\ H. Res, 561.

§ H. Res. 1553.

ft Congressional Record , April 4, 195s, pp. 3537, 3539 el seq ,

330 APPENDIX Bi STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

Thus the resolution passed with a majority of both Democrats and
Republicans.

In this Democrat-controlled Congress, 100 Democrats had voted
for a resolution presented by a Democrat, and 88 Democrats had
voted against it. When it came to appointing the four Democratic
members of the Committee, however, two were selected who had voted
against the resolution:

Yea E. E. Cox of Georgia

Yea Brooks Hays of Arkansas

Nay Donald L. O'Toole of New York
Nay Aime J. Forand of Rhode Island

The three Republican appointees had all voted for the resolution or
been "paired" for itl

B. Carroll Reece of Tennessee
Richard M. Simpson of Pennsylvania
Angier L. Goodwin of Massachusetts

Congressman Wayne Hays of Ohio, who was later to become the
major obstacle preventing orderly completion of the assignment of the
Reece Committee, voted against the Cox resolution.

On May 8 an allowance of $100,000 was requested, but the House
Committee on Administration cut this request to $75,000 and this
sum was appropriated on July 2. The vote on the appropriation
was:

Yeas 247 Democrats in

Republicans 135
Independent 1

Nays 99 Democrats 62

Republicans 37

Among those who voted against this appropriation was Mr. Wayne
Hays of Ohio.

THE WORK OF THE COX COMMITTEE

Though the Cox Committee came in like a lion, it went out like a
lamb.

WORK OF COX COMMITTEE 331

Most of the testimony taken by this Committee was by officers and
trustees of large foundations and by persons associated with them. It
consisted largely of adulatory statements praising the work of the
major foundations. Fourteen representatives of foundations were
heard, of whom The Rockefeller Foundation provided three; The
Ford Foundation, five; and the Carnegie foundations, six, A number
of academicians appeared, all of whom praised the foundations and
had no serious criticism to offer.

No critics of foundation activity were heard except Alfred Kohl-
berg, who had been responsible for unearthing the malfeasances of
The Institute of Pacific Relations, and four witnesses called to prove
that there had been conscious Communist penetration of foundations*
None of the foundation representatives was put under oath. In contrast,
witnesses who testified to Communist penetration were sworn in.

The final report of some fifteen pages was unanimous, except for
the appended statement by Mr. Reece, to which I shall later refer. The
report held to be unwarranted almost all the criticisms which had
been made of foundation activity.

The Cox Committee did find that there had been a Communist ,
Moscow-directed plot to hifilirate American foundations and to use
their funds for Communist purposes . The final report* of January

J953» said:

There can be no reasonable doubt concerning the efforts of the
Communist Party both to infiltrate the foundations and to make
use, so far as it was possible, of foundation grants to finance Com-
munist causes and Communist sympathizers. The committee is
satisfied that as long as 20 years ago Moscow decided upon a
program of infiltrating cultural and educational groups and or-
ganizations in this country, including the foundations. The Amer-
ican Communist Party, following the program laid down in
Moscow, went so far as to create a subcommission of the Agit-
Prop (Agitation-Propaganda) or Cultural Commission which
gave specific attention to foundations. The aims were to capture
the foundations where possible, and where this proved impos-
sible, to infiltrate them for the purposes (1) of diverting their
funds directly into Communist hands, and (2) procuring finan-
cial assistance for projects and individuals favorable to commu-

• No. 3514, 82nd Cong, and session.

332 Appendix Br story of reece committee

nism while diverting assistance from projects and individuals
unfavorable to communism. A few small foundations became
the captives of the Communist Party. Here and there a founda-
tion board included a Communist or a Communist sympathizer.
Occasionally a Communist managed to secure a position on the
staff of a foundation or a staff member was drawn into the Com-
munist orbit.

The Cox Committee referred to the "unhappy instances where the
committee is convinced infiltration occurred. There remains/' it said,
"the ugly unalterable fact that Alger Hiss became the president of
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And this despite
the fact that his nomination and election came about through the
efforts .of men of proven loyalty and broad experience in public

affairs."

The report said that the Committee was "hurried by lack of time"
(which was certainly true) and could not do much research in this
area. It went so far as to say, however, regarding foundation grants
to Communists and for Communist use;

In the aggregate, the number of such grants and the amounts
involved are alarming.

The report hastened to add;

Proportionately, when viewed in the light of the total grants
made, they are surprisingly small.

The use of the word "surprising" is surprising. It would indeed
have been "surprising" if a large percentage of foundation grants had
gone to Communist use.

The Cox Committee report did mention the support given by The
Rockefeller Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation and The Carne-
gie Endowment for International Peace to The Institute of Pacific
Relations, to the extent of millions of dollars. But the report dis*
charged the tragic IPR incident with this statement;

The whole unhappy story of the IPR, which was largely sup-
ported by foundation funds, has been so fully revealed by the
investigation of the McCarran committee that there is no need
to make further reference to it here.

WORK OF COX COMMITTEE 333

There was, indeed, good reason for discussing the IPR story in de-
tail. The McCarran Committee had investigated subversion. The Cox
Committee investigated foundations. The grave misuse of foundation
funds, involved in the IPR incident, with catastrophic effect upon our
foreign policy, deserved more analysis by the Cox Committee than
the brief, quoted reference. There were lessons to be learned from
the support by the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations of The In-
stitute of Pacific Relations. The Internal Security Committee had
determined

• # * that the IPR has been in general, neither objective nor
non-partisan; * * * that the net effect of IPR activities on
United States public opinion has been pro-Communist and pro-
Soviet, and has frequently and repeatedly been such as to serve
the international Communist, and Soviet interests, and to sub -
vert the interests of the United States,9

While the Cox Committee report recognized Communist penetra-
tion of the foundation world, it said

that very few actual Communists or Communist sympathizers
obtained positions of influence in the foundations.

Having softly disposed of the issue of Communist infiltration in
foundations, the report treated even more gently the frequent criti-
cism that some foundations had “supported persons, organizations,
and projects which, if not subversive in the extreme sense of the word,
tend to weaken or discredit the capitalist system as it exists in the
United States and to favor Marxist socialism/' (It took the position
that the support foundations had given to socialism was “educational"
only.)

This quotation from the Cox report recognizes the use of the term
“subversion" in its true, primary meaning of an undermining. Yet
when the Reece Committee later termed broad foundation support
of socialism to be “subversive,” it was bitterly criticized for using the
dictionary meaning of “subversion” instead of limiting its use strictly
to Communist-socialist penetration.

Many of leftward persuasion protested against the investigation by
the Reece Committee on the ground that it was unnecessary because
the work had already been done by the Cox Committee. But the Cox

• Internal Security Committee Report , p. 84. Emphasis supplied,

334 APPENDIX Bs STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

report itself stated in no uncertain terms that the Committee had
had insufficient time to do its job.

Here is but one of such admissions, relating to an area of investiga-
tion the omission of which, alone, was sufficient ground for a renewed
investigation. The Cox Committee report propounded this (7th) criti-
cal question:

Through their power to grant and withhold funds have founda-
tions tended to shift the center of gravity of colleges and other
institutions to a point outside the institutions themselves?

It commented upon this criticism as follows:

This question arises from a criticism which has come to the com-
mittee from persons well informed generally and situated in
positions from xvhich a strategic view of the situation can be
had . THE COMMITTEE DOES NOT CONSIDER ITSELF
SUFFICIENTLY WELL ADVISED ON THIS POINT TO
HAZARD A VIEW. [Emphasis and capitalization in this para-
graph supplied.]

This line of criticism, that foundations had exerted great and ex-
cessive influence over educational institutions, was levied, as the re-
port says, by persons of authority. It is one of the gravest charges
entered against foundation activity in the United States. If the founda-
tions have exercised a powerful influence on our schools and colleges,
tending to control them from outside their academic walls, the Con-
gress and the people of the United States were entitled to know about
it. That the Cox Committee had been unable to expend the time to
study it, called for a renewed Congressional investigation; it would
be only through a committee of Congress that all the relative facts
could be brought to light.

The Cox Committee had also received much criticism concerning
the alleged favoritism of some foundations for “internationalism.”
This criticism, the report held to be unsound. The Cox Committee
had no adequate basis for coming to this conclusion. It had not col-
lected or studied the facts. It would have been better to say, as it did
in the case of foundation influence on educational institutions, that
it did not have adequate time to investigate — instead of arriving at a
categorical conclusion based on obviously insufficient data.

The Cox Committee report erroneously concluded that, although

BIRTH OF REECE COMMITTEE 335

there might have been some derelictions on the part of foundations,
it was the little ones which had been guilty and not the great and
poxuerful foundations; these were beyond criticism.

Its conclusions were considerably weakened by its admission that it
had inadequate time to do the job assigned to it. Moreover, the sue*
ceeding Reece Committee found in the Cox Committee files a con-
siderable amount of material critical of foundation operations which
had not been used by the latter.

Upon examining the Cox Committee files, which it received soon
after going into action, the staff of the Reece Committee immediately
reported to the Clerk of the House that many important documents
and memoranda were missing.* As an example, a file marked "Rob-
ert Hutchins” was found to be completely empty. Whether such data
were destroyed by the Cox Committee staff or were purloined by
others, was never ascertained.

Congressmen are extremely busy men. The members of the Cox
Committee were confronted with a gigantic research job, the satis-
factory conclusion of which would have required far, far more time
than they were allotted. Moreover, as is inevitably the case, they must
have left the burden of organization and direction almost entirely to
their chairman, Congressman Cox. It may well be that, even with the
handicap of lack of time, the Cox Committee would have been more
productive had Mr. Cox not been stricken down. He fell gravely ill
while the investigation was under way and died before the report was
filed.

BIRTH OF THE REECE COMMITTEE

At the end of the Cox Committee report appeared this endorsement
by Congressman Reece:

As pointed out and stressed in this report, the select committee
has had insufficient time for the magnitude of its task. Although
I was unable to attend the full hearing, I feel compelled to
observe that, if a more comprehensive study is desired, the in-
quiry might be continued by the Eighty-third Congress with
profit in view of the importance of the subject, the fact that
tax-exempt funds in very large amounts are spent without public
accountability or official supervision of any sort, and that, ad-

* Recce Committee Hearings, pp. 6-7.

336 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

mittedly, considerable questionable expenditures have been
made.

In the Eighty-third Congress, Mr. Reece introduced a resolution
for a new investigation, accompanying it with a speech.® He referred
to the work of the Cox Committee as “unfinished business." He stated
that, while this Committee had disclosed serious malfeasance by some
foundations, its work had been far too limited to warrant legislative
proposals being based upon it* He cited, in particular:

That the Cox Committee had been given inadequate time;

That foundation officers and trustees had not been sworn as
witnesses;

That these persons had been permitted to excuse the im-
proper grants made by their foundations as "unwitting" or as
made through "ignorance";

That these witnesses were not asked why they were continuing
to make grants “to organizations, projects and persons which are
promoting special interests or ideologies," and even “outright
political objectives"; and

That the Cox Committee had failed to use much of the critical
documentary evidence in its possession, relating to "subversive
and un-American propaganda activities which attempted to in-
fluence legislation."

Such a resolution passes into the hands of the Rules Committee,
and here this one stayed a long while. But the Rules Committee finally
voted the resolution to the floor of the House, where it was presented,
toward the end of the session, on July 27, 1953.

Mr, Reece accompanied the calling up of the resolution with a
speech which pleaded for further investigation of tax-exempt founda-
tions by referring at great length to suspicions of substantial founda-
tion delinquencies.f This speech was no ^prejudging” of the founda-
tions, as some of the opponents of the investigation have claimed,
but was intended to bring forcefully to the attention of the House of
Representatives the seriousness of the complaints which had been
made of certain acts of certain foundations.

The resolution passed, by a substantial majority:

* Congressional Record , April 23, 1953, p. 3776.

t Congressional Record, July 27, 1953, p. 10188 el, seq., included in the Reece
Committee Hearings, p. 25 el seq .

MANDATE TO THE COMMITTEE 337

Yeas 869 Republicans 140

Democrats 69

Nays 163 Republicans 49

Democrats 113
Independent 1

The Committee authorized by the Reece resolution was directed to
report before January 3, 1955, which gave it approximately a year
and a half of life. This was almost a year longer than the life of the
Cox Committee, and it seemed as though a reasonably thorough in-
quiry might be had.

The first step was to appoint a Committee. Three Republicans
were appointed and two Democrats. Of the appointed Committee of
five, three had voted against the resolution — Republican Congress-
man Goodwin (who had been a member of the Cox Committee),
Democratic Congressman Wayne Hays of Ohio, and Democratic Con-
gresswoman Gracie Pfost of Idaho. The other two Republicans (and
the only members who had voted for the resolution) were Congress-
men Carroll Reece of Tennessee and Jesse Wolcott of Michigan. The
majority (Republican) members were appointed by Representative
Martin, Speaker of the House; the minority (Democrat) members by
Rayburn, die minority leader.

MANDATE TO THE COMMITTEE

The enabling resolution read in part as follows (I have italicized
several parts to emphasize its essential character);

The committee is authorized and directed to conduct a full and
complete investigation and study of educational and philanthro-
pic foundations and other comparable organizations which are ex-
empt from Federal income taxation to determine if any founda-
tions and organizations are using their resources for purposes
other than the purposes for xohich they were established, and
especially to determine which such foundations and organiza-
tions are using their resources for un-American and subversive
activities; for political purposes; propaganda, or attempts to in-
fluence legislation.

Thus the Committee was not directed to judge how beneficent
foundations had been, but to determine whether any had been guilty

338 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

of undesirable conduct. Yet abuse has been heaped upon the Com- .
mittee majority because its investigation was critical. The term ‘'un-
fair'' has been hurled at it because it dared to research the serious
criticisms which had been leveled at some of the foundations, not by
“crack-pots” but, as even the report of the Cox Committee admitted,
by well-informed citizens.

These attacks came, in part, from the very same professional mana-
gers of some of the foundations whose acts were subjected to criti-
cism. They came also in large part from persons whose political
and social ideologies made them sympathetic to the questioned acts
which had been brought to light. After all, it is a matter of whose foot
the shoe pinches. An investigation of “the stock market” or of the
“munitions interests" or the “power monopoly” or some other critical
investigation of an activity associated with free enterprise capitalism
would be supported enthusiastically by those same persons to whom
an exposure of the collectivist activities of foundations would seem
an outrage. .

PREPARATION FOR THE HEARINGS

Just how should a committee of this kind go about its work? Should
it start hearings immediately, put foundation representatives on the
stand, and ask them to state whether they thought any criticisms of
foundation activities were justified? That was largely the procedure
of the Cox Committee, and it partly explains the failure of that Com-
mittee adequately to discharge its mandate. Obviously, it would be
futile to rely upon witnesses for the foundations to disclose their own
delinquencies. They could hardly be expected to beat their breasts
and cry mea culpa .

Some committees, operating in dissimilar areas, could rely wholly
on the power of subpoena, and bring in witnesses from whose lips the
full facts could be forced. Such procedure would have brought the
Reece Committee nowhere. The activities of the foundations are re-
flected in a mass of printed matter. As the majority report stated:

The materials of most value are to be found in voluminous
literature, reports and records. Deciding among points of view
becomes chiefly a matter of processing the mass of research ma-
terial which is available, and determining, not on the basis of

THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS 339

witnesses* opinions but on a judicial weighing of the factual

evidence, which are correct.*

The Committee drew an analogy with the work of the Temporary
National Economic Committee (TNEC), which "conducted hearings
but leaned heavily on staff reports published in over fifty volumes."

THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Mr. Reece automatically became Chairman because he had pre-
sented the resolution.

I had not met him before I took the assignment as General Counsel.
I had had some correspondence with him, some years before, upon
the occasion of an admirable speech which he had made on foreign
policy, from which I later quoted in a book.-}' In my first meeting
with him, I quickly concluded that we could have a happy relation-
ship. He is charming, courteous and understanding. My long associa-
tion with him has resulted in mounting respect for his intelligence,
sincerity, and integrity.

The violence of some of the attacks on Carroll Reece as a result of
this investigation were amazing. He has been accused of plotting
against the foundations, of conspiring to defame and damage them
for some mysterious reason of his own relating to personal political
ambition. I have never found the slightest evidence of personal, politi-
cal ambition in Mr. Reece.

At no time did Mr. Reece ever dictate procedure to me; at no time
did he ever seek to influence my mind; at no time did he ever give
me a thesis to prove. Mr. Reece had no motive whatsoever other than
to ascertain whether the severe criticisms of foundations which had
come to his attention were correct. What he was after, and he so in-
structed me, was to find out what the facts truly were.

Mr. Reece has been called an "anti-intellectual" by his detractors.
This is an absurdity. After graduating from a southern college, Mr,
Rcecc took graduate work at New York University and at the Uni-
versity of London. He became an instructor in economics at New York
University, and assistant secretary of that University, He later became
director of its School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance. He lias two
honorary doctorates,

• Recce Committee Report, p. 15.

t The Myth of the Good and Bad Nations, Regnery, p. 40.

340 APPENDIX B; STORY OP REECE COMMITTEE

He is a member of the Tennessee and D.C. bars; president of sev-
eral banks, and the publisher of a newspaper. Hie has been one of the
longest records of service as a Congressman. Fie was formerly Chair-
man of the National Republican Committee.

Mr. Wolcott, the only other member of the Committee who had
voted for the resolution, was one of the busiest, ablest, and most re-
spected men in the House. He was Chairman of the Banking and
Currency Committee. This Committee, engaged in constant and im-
portant work, took so much of his time that he was able to attend
hearings of the Committee on Foundations only at rare intervals. It
was easier to get his attendance at meetings of the Committee itself,
which could be arranged to the convenience of all members. Here
his wisdom, equability, and strength of character were of great serv-
ice.

The Reece Committee sorely missed Mr. Wolcott when he could
not attend. His contribution was, nevertheless, very substantial, and
I am deeply grateful to him for his constant courtesy, his willingness
to be consulted even in a press of work, and his warm and earnest
support.

The third Republican member was Mr. Goodwin of Massachusetts.
He remains an enigma. I have rarely met a man more kindly, gentle,
and thoughtful. But he did vote against the resolution and, unless the
ranking minority member of the Committee, Mr. Hays, lied from the
rostrum, Mr. Goodwin had stated privately to Mr. Hays that he was
“on his side," It is difficult to believe that Mr. Goodwin had made up
his mind in advance to oppose findings of the Committee which might
be critical of foundations, but that is what Mr. Hays implied in this
vicious thrust at Mr. Goodwin;

I heard you say you are getting tired. Do you know what I am
getting tired of? I am tired of you taking one position in public
with pious speeches and then running to me in secret and saying,
“You know whose side my sympathies are on/' Why don't you
act like a man?*

The strange separate opinion which Mr. Goodwin filed, after voting
for the report with the right to file a reserving statement, expresses
some conflict within himself.

* Reece Committee Hearings, vol, ), p. 863,

APPOINTMENT OF COUNSEL AND STAFF 341

Mrs. Pfost, one of the Democratic members, was uniformly pleasant*
She was somewhat overshadowed by her vociferous fellow Democrat
and inclined to follow where he led. I say this not unkindly, however,
for I found Mrs. Pfost willing to observe congressional protocol, and
a woman of poise and charm.

The belligerent member of the Committee was Mr. Wayne Hays,
die ranking Democrat. He was frank enough to tell us that he had
been put on the Committee by Mr, Rayburn, the Democratic Leader
in the House, as the equivalent of a watchdog. Just what he was to
“watch" was not made clear until it became apparent that Mr. Hays
was making it his business to frustrate the investigation to the greatest
extent possible.

My professional relations with him were complicated by a succession
of his intemperate outbursts. From the start, I was anxious to work
with all the Committee members as closely as circumstances would
permit. Mr, Norman Dodd, the Director of Research, and I made
every effort to convince Mr. Hays that we wished to work closely with
him, Mr, Dodd, in particular, had many conversations with Mr. Hays;
he outlined to him the nature and theory of the most grave criticisms
which had been made of foundations and which we intended to inves-
tigate. Nothing was withheld from him. We were utterly sincere in our
offers to work intimately with him and to keep him as much abreast
of our research as he might wish. But wc were met with suspicion and
distrust and a succession of scenes which were quite unpleasant to
live through,

It was difficult enough to work with Mr. Hays in the initial stages
of the investigation. When it came to the hearings, he conducted him*
self with quice fantastic belligerence.

APPOINTMENT OF COUNSEL AND STAFF

l was officially designated as general counsel at a meeting of the
Committee attended on September 15, 1953, by Messrs, Reece, Good*
win, and Hays. My law partner, Arnold T. Koch, was appointed
associate counsel. I had suggested him because he is a trial lawyer of
the first rank, a man of great wisdom and balanced judgment. His
contributions to the success of the Committee's work were most im-
portant,

The major problem in collecting a staff was to find a research
director qualified by experience and interest* After many interviews,

342 APPENDIX Br STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

Mr. Norman Dodd was selected. He had spent many years, and much
of his own money, on research of a nature which intimately touched
the foundation world.

Mr. Thomas McNiece was selected as assistant research director. He
had wide experience and was a researcher of exceptional ability and
statistical experience.

Two of the staff were personal selections of my own. One was Dr.
Karl Ettinger, the story of whose release before he had completed his
work, I shall tell later. Dr. Ettinger's contributions, while he was with
us, were vitally important. A deep student, incisive in his thinking,
encyclopedic in his learning, both a theorist of the first quality and a
researcher of unusual rapidity and thoroughness, he pursued many
avenues of inquiry which would have been closed to a less qualified
and searching mind. He advocated the use of scientific research
methods in the Committee inquiry. Much of the rich material collected
by the investigation was assembled by him for the purpose of objec-
tive, quantitative and qualitative analysis.

My other selection was Miss Kathryn Casey, a member of the Wash-
ington bar. She became a “legal analyst,” and was an indefatigable
and sound investigator. In later stages of the investigation, when our
financial situation reduced the staff to a skeleton, she filled many
separate functions with terrific energy and was priceless.

Mr. Hays had asked to have the right to designate one staff member,
and the Committee had readily assented. His first selection was un-
acceptable, as he himself later agreed. His second, Miss Lucy Loner-
gan, daughter of the late Senator Lonergan, was wholly acceptable and
she was appointed a research assistant.

RESEARCH STARTS

It was well into the fall of 1953 before intensive research could
begin. Meanwhile, I had spent considerable time analyzing the gen-
eral problem of how the investigation might be conducted. The Reece
Committee has been accused by the “liberal” press of having pre-
judged the foundations. The fact is that I accepted my assignment
only on the condition that I could direct an objective inquiry. My
own ideas of how the work should be conducted are to be found in
an initial report of Counsel on procedure made to the Committee
under date of October 23, 1953. It follows as Appendix C. This re-
port was acquiesced in and became the basis for the staff's work.

MONEY TROUBLES 343

LIMITATIONS ON THE STUDY

The work of the staff was concentrated on a comparatively small
number of foundations, and necessarily so. To review even a sub-
stantial number of the existing organizations in sufficient detail to
make any sense would have been impossible. Moreover, the com-
plaints registered with the Committee and the critical material which
it encountered centered principally in some of the largest of the
foundations and certain intermediary and satellite organizations
which they chiefly supported. It was felt better to do as thorough a
job on this limited few as we could, than to scatter our work among
many. It is also obvious enough that, if unhappy practices exist in the
foundation world, it would be of more service to the country to dis-
close those which were backed by great wealth than to spend precious
time on the questionable practices of comparatively inconsequential
foundations.

The Recce Committee interested itself almost solely in the so-called
‘'social sciences/’ education, and international affairs. Little criticism
has ever been made of the work of foundations in other areas, such as
pure science, medicine, public health, and the direct support of exist-
ing institutions of the character of hospitals, schools, tyid churches,

MONEY TROUBLES

Mr. Reece had initially applied for an appropriation of $125,000.
Appropriations are referred to the Committee on Administration,
which is the financial watchdog of the House of Representatives. This
Committee was, at the time, Republican controlled. Its Chairman
was Congressman Le Compte of Iowa. A member of the Reece Com-
mittee was also on the Administration Committee — unfortunately,
this was Mr. Hays, who had consistently voted against investigating
foundations.

The Administration Committee met and recommended a reduced
appropriation of $50,000 instead of the $125,000 which Mr. Reece
had requested. No one in his right mind expected that this would
carry the Committee through its year and a half of life, for the Cox
Committee had spent $50,000 in about six months. So the Reece Com-
mittee was given $50,000 with the expectation that it would apply at
the end of the calendar year (1953) for an additional appropriation
to carry it through a full remaining year of work.

344 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

Shortly after the beginning of the following year (1954) Mr. Reece
made his expected application for additional funds. The staff had
estimated that $120,000 would be our minimum requirement. After
studying a tentative budget carefully, Mr. Reece agreed that this
figure was reasonable, and applied for it.

It was expected that our application would be acted on promptly.
But nothing happened for a long while, and we began to worry. We
had expected to schedule hearings in February, or in March at the
latest, but it was impossible to do any precise planning until we were
sure of the appropriation, which now seemed doubtful indeed. During
this period of uncertainty, when we did not know whether we were
to be permitted to carry on or not, Mr. Reece did everything he could
to hasten the consideration of our appropriation, but Mr. Le Compte
would not budge.

Finally a break came. Mr. Hays, who had been "bumped off" the
Administration Committee on some seniority basis, now was suddenly
restored to that Committee, and immediately threw himself into the
appropriation issue.

This is how he operated. He came to Mr. Reece and made certain
demands. If these were accepted, he would vote for our appropria-
tion. If they were not accepted, he would vote against it. Control of
the Administration Committee was Republican and Mr. Reece was a
Republican, but the ways of politics are often mysterious. Mr. Hays
had told us that his Party had given him complete discretion regard-
ing the Committee on Foundations — that it had been left to him to
decide whether to try to kill it or let it continue. What power did he
really have? Who knowsl Issues frequently cross party lines, and those
faced by the Reece Committee certainly did. All Democrats were not
against us. All Republicans were not for us. If Mr. Hays, therefore,
had delegated power to turn the entire Democratic membership of
the Administration Committee against us, and if one or two Re-
publicans were against us also, we were out of business. So Mr. Reece
deemed it best to listen to Mr. Flays.

These, then, were Mr. Hays's proposals. The Committee was to drop
two members of its staff. Dr. Ettinger and Mr. George DeHuszar; and
Mr. Hays was to be given a member of the staff to help him write a
minority report if he decided to. This last condition was easy enough
to comply with. He had already appointed a member of the staff, Miss
Lonergan, and it was no burden to agree to let her stay on until the

LOSS OF ETTINGER AND DEHUSZAR 345

reports were in. But to be obliged to give up the expert services of
two productive staff members was a different matter.

Nevertheless, Mr. Reece felt compelled to accede in order not to
take any chance that the investigation might be starved out of exist-
ence. Shortly after that, the application for an appropriation was acted
upon. A sub committee of the Administration Committee met and
recommended $100,000. Although this was less than we believed we
needed, we breathed a sigh of relief to have been awarded even that.
But our pleasure was short-lived. The whole Administration Commit-
tee later met and cut us down to $65,000, a sum palpably inade-
quate.

LOSS OF ETTINGER AND DcHUSZAR

Mr. Hays knew what he was doing when he coerced the release of
Dr. Ettinger and Mr, DeHuszar from our staff. He was in frequent
consultation with representatives of some of the more important
foundations and their allies.

Mr. DeHuszar had already shown his capacity on the staff of the
Cox Committee, to which he had contributed a mass of critical ma-
terial which was not used. In his work for the Reece Committee he had
begun to assemble significant data on particularly unpleasant ex-
amples of the practices of major foundations. When he was released,
this research came to an end.

In die case of Dr. Ettinger the loss to the inquiry was tragic. Many
of our most valuable lines of inquiry were devised or initiated by
him. He had insisted on the tabulation of questionnaire returns and
a systematic collection of complete sets of data. He had, in the short
period of his services to the Committee, assembled substantial data on
foundation activities in education and research. Some of these he was
able to bring to sufficient completion to enable us to use much of his
material. Many of his projects, including some of primary significance,
came to an end when he was released. It was impossible for the busy,
curtailed staff to take up where he had left off. In this way, some of
our potentially most important material was lost to the Committee.*

• Among these uncompleted studies of Dr. Ettinger were a survey of founda-
tion support to colleges, to discover patterns of giving, and preferences for
certain types of institutions in social-science support; a survey and study of
the learned journals, so often an instrument of power in the hands of small
professional cliques, with a resultant effect upon the volume and quality
of professional papers; a study of the relationship of foundations and inter*

346 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

To make certain that Mr. Hays's appointee, Miss Lonergan, would
be in the heart of things, we had assigned her to assist Dr. Ettinger.
She was thus familiar with all his important work. While Mr. Hays
did not succeed, by any of his tactics, in destroying the investigation,
he did deal it an extremely serious wound in forcing the release of
this brilliant investigator. Had he remained on the staff, a much
greater volume of material would have been available to judge ob-
jectively the social implications inherent in the operations of some of
the major foundations and their satellites.

Mr. Hays's expressed reason for demanding Dr. Ettinger's release
was that he was a Socialist. This is rather amusing, since Dr. Ettinger's
work consisted in substantial part of unearthing examples of founda-
tion support of socialism. At least since 1925 Ettinger had been ac-
tive in publicly opposing Socialist programs, and in consequence for
more than thirty years he had been identified by his writings and
activities as an advocate of the free-enterprise system.

TROUBLE FOR COUNSEL

On February 15, 1954, but as of January 1, 1954, Congressman
Le Compte, the chairman of the Administration Committee, which is
the housekeeping committee of the House of Representatives, re-
moved both Mr. Koch and me from the payroll through an order sent
to the Clerk of the House. This was done without previous discussion
with Mr. Reece — in fact, while Mr. Reece was out of Washington; Mr.
Le Compte merely directed the Clerk of the House to wipe our names
from the payroll of the Committee, and notified Mr. Reece by letter
that he had done so. Mr. Le Compte’s action was taken on a wholly
fictitious set of facts indicating that Mr. Koch and I had violated the
Federal statute proscribing a conflict of interest.

Mr. Koch and I had retained our professional relationship with
our law firm in New York. Mr. Le Compte assumed that our firm
was engaged in “tax practice," with the implication that we were
currently trying tax cases against the government. An obvious conflict

mediary organizations to these journals; special studies on the interlocks exist-
ing between foundations, professional groups, certain government advisory
and research institutions, and a few leading universities; an inquiry into col-
lege-accrediting organizations; and several more studies of importance relating
to the activities of foundations and their associated organizations in educa-
tion and the social sciences. His interest was in a wholly objective analysis
and weighing of the activities of foundations in the social-science world.

MR. HAYS AND "THE WHITE HOUSE" 347

of interest would have been present if Mr. Lc Compte's assumed
facts were correct. Mr. Koch and I would have had no right to remain
in the employ of the government if, at the same time, we were litigat-
ing against it.

The facts were that our firm was not in "tax practice" in the sense
of specialists engaged in litigation against the government. I had
never tried a tax case in my life. Mr. Koch, while an eminent trial
lawyer, had never tried a tax case while associated with our firm.
Moreover, Mr. Koch and I had directed our firm to withdraw from
even such routine tax matters as the settlement of an estate*tax return
or an income-tax return at any point where direct controversy with
the Government resulted.

Mr. Le Compte made no attempt to get the true facts before taking
action. The facts were communicated to Mr. Le Compte promptly
but without result. All our efforts to see and talk to Mr. Le Compte
were met with rebuff. Mr. Le Compte would not see us and examine
us as to the facts. Nothing was accomplished until I wrote to Speaker
Martin on March 17 explaining our situation, which Mr. Koch and I
found intolerable, and urgently requesting his immediate intercession.

This letter was handed to Mr. Martin by Mr. Reece. Not long
thereafter, Mr. Koch and I were restored to the payroll, with retro-
active pay.

MR. HAYS AND " THE WHITE HOUSE”

President Eisenhower is very conscious of the separate prerogatives
of the Congress and would not knowingly countenance any inter-
ference by the executive with the functions of the legislature. But it
is utterly clear, unless Mr. Hays has sorely prevaricated, that someone
in "the White House” was actively opposed to the investigation of
foundations.

Mr. Hays reported to us on two separate occasions that "the
White House" had been in touch with him regarding our investiga-
tion.

One of these occasions had to do with our request for an executive
order to examine a form known as 990A. This is an information form
required to be filed with the Internal Revenue Service by foundations.
Most of it is open to public inspection; one part is not and can be
seen only through an executive order. Why any part should be secret
I do not know. Foundations are, necessarily and admittedly, public

348 APPENDIX B; STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

trusts, and information concerning them should be open to the public,
which is their beneficiary.

As the 990A forms contained information of great value to the
investigation, Mr. Reece applied for the necessary executive order as
early as November 16, 1953. Nothing happened for months.

Our first news regarding the application came when Mr, Hays in-
formed us that he had been telephoned by “the White House" and
asked whether he objected to our having access to the 990A forms. He
had replied, he said, that he did object, and on the ground that they
were “confidential tax returns." I explained to him that they were not
“tax" returns but “information** returns and that, as far as we were
concerned, they were not confidential as we had the right to extract
the full information from the individual foundations by subpoena,
Some time later, on February i, 1954, an executive order was issued
giving us access to the forms, (Note that we applied on November

16/ 1953-)

Did we get the forms immediately? We had indicated which founda-
tion focms we were most interested in, but apparently no efforts had
been made to call these in from the regional offices. Finally, on April
8, 1954 (I emphasize that we applied on November 16, 1953), we
were informed that we could now examine the ggoAs. Even then,
however, all the forms we had requested had not been called in; we
were forbidden to take any forms from the office of the Internal
Revenue Service; we were not permitted to photostat any; and we
were permitted to examine such forms as were ready for us only in
a designated room in the presence of a representative of the Service,

After the order had been granted, I visited an assistant commis-
sioner, accompanied by Miss Casey, to arrange for an examination
of the ggoAs. The assistant commissioner told us that certain docu-
ments had to be prepared, and gave Miss Casey the necessary in-
structional forms. These were complied with, and the forms were
typed and signed at once; but the Service required four successive
revisions before we were told that the documentation was satisfactory.

When we finally got access to the forms, the hearings were so im-
minent that no effective use of the materials to be extracted from
the ggoAs could be made.

MR. HAYS AND THE STAFF 349

COINCIDENCES?

The reader may have noted certain coincidences.

After fantastically long delays in each instance, the final granting
of our (tragically reduced) appropriation, the final restoration of
Mr, Koch and myself to the payroll, and the final granting of access to
the Q9oA forms, were just about simultaneous.

Coincidence?

MR, HAYS AND “THE WHITE HOUSE” AGAIN

The second incident involving "the White House” and Mr. Hays
was even more remarkable. Mr. Hays is no Senator George. He is not
one likely to be called into conference on policy as a representative
of the Democratic Party. He is a relatively unimportant member of
the House, who has attained no eminence and acquired only notoriety
by his conduct on the Reece Committee.

Yet Mr, Hay's told ns one day that “the White House” had been
in touch with him and asked him if he would cooperate to kill the
Committee . His reply, he said, was that he would let the Republicans
fight their own battles.

We could not believe, of course, that the incident had any official
significance. We concluded that the call from "the White House” must
have been the act of an individual, without sanction of the President,
and without his knowledge. But it was uncomfortable to be led to
believe that someone close to the President, perhaps one of his ad-
visers or someone charged with delegated executive power, could have
been guilty of such conduct. It was additional indication that the long
arms of the foundations extended even into high places.

MR, HAYS AND THE STAFF

Congressman Reece has been criticized for not having taken a more
aggressive attitude as Committee chairman, opposing Mr. Hays's con-
stant harassment. Mr, Reece is a brave man who has given evidence,
both in his astounding and much*decorated military career and in his
political life, that he can fight. But Mr, Reece understood, soon after
our investigation started, if not before, that we would be met with
every obstacle which could be put in our way. He was determined to
finish the job which he had undertaken and not to be diverted into
personal controversy, His attitude reminded me of the Chinese prov-

350 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

erb: “The wise man is like water, the softest thing which yet breaks
the hardest thing."

Sometimes a Congressional committee starts with a honeymoon,
later to be disrupted by quarrels. There was no honeymoon for the
Reece Committee. From the very start Mr. Hays began to harass the
staff and to complain and obstruct.

He complained frequently that he did not know what the staff was
doing. The fact is, he knew more about what was going on than any
other member of the Committee, not excepting the chairman. Once
my original report to the Committee had been approved, Mr. Reece
permitted us to go ahead without restraint, understanding that our
job was fact finding and that time would be wasted by detailed reports
until we had virtually completed the study period of the investigation.
As suggestions, inquiries, and data came to Mr. Reece, he would
transmit them to us for attention. Beyond this, he left us free to test
whether complaints regarding foundation activities were justified.

Mr. Hays, on the other hand, had a personal reporter on the staff.
Nothing was withheld from Miss Lonergan, Mr. Hays’s personal ap-
pointee. All records were open to her inspection. Our instructions
to her were clear — she was to report to him whatever she chose to re-
port and whatever he might be interested in. This she did, and with
frequency.

Mr. Hays accused us of engaging in research not authorized by the
Committee. This accusation was an absurdity. The general line of our
research carefully followed the authority given to the Committee by
the resolution which created it. This in turn was not materially differ-
ent from that which created the previous Cox Committee. Mr. Hays’s
position seemed to be that every detail of proposed research had to
have express approval of the Committee before we could spend any
time on it. This Mr. Reece told us was not so — that, as long as we
stayed within the four corners of the authorizing resolution, we were
free to research what we thought advisable, except insofar as the Com-
mittee instructed us to abstain.

Despite all his earlier complaints, Mr. Hays well knew that he had
received every possible cooperation from the staff, as he acknowledged
during the hearings as follows:

Mr. Chairman, let me say that I may be seeming to ask some
critical questions, but I do not want to imply that there has been

MR. HAYS AND DR. KINSEY 351

any trouble between myself and the staff. It may be that I do not
sec eye to eye on a good many things, but the staff has been very
responsive any time I have asked them a question to come up
and explain it, or to make the files available, or anything like
that. There has been no difficulty whatsoever on that score.4

MR. HAYS AND DR. KINSEY

Several lines of inquiry enraged Mr. Hays particularly. One, which
disclosed his reluctance to permit freedom of inquiry, was a proposed
study of the Kinsey reports. It was undoubtedly reported to him by
Miss Lonergan that Dr. Ettinger had dug up some significant material
about foundation support of the Kinsey projects. This brought Mr.
Hays to a steaming rage, and he asked to see our entire Kinsey file. It
was produced for him, and he angrily declared to Mr. Dodd that we
were to go no further with this particular investigation, contending
that every member of Congress would be against our doing so. Neither
Mr. Dodd nor I could see any reason why Dr. Kinsey's foundation-
supported projects should not bear as much scrutiny as any other
foundation operation. But Mr. Hays then introduced another element
into the situation. Our appropriation for 1954 had, at the time, not
yet been approved, and Mr. Hays stated emphatically to Mr. Dodd
that he would oppose any further appropriation to our Committee
unless the Kinsey investigation were dropped. His unreasoning op-
position to any study of these projects was so great that he threatened
to fight against the appropriation on the floor of the House.

As we were already fearful that an appropriation might not come
through, and our work would be frustrated, Mr. Dodd concluded
that Mr. Hays must be appeased. He suggested, therefore, that Mr.
Hays take the entire Kinsey file and lock it in his personal safe so
that he would know the material could not be used without the ex-
press consent of the Committee. This Mr. Hays did: the file remained
in his safe throughout the hearings. For all I know, he may still have
it.

The Kinsey reports did, in the course of the open hearings, become
part of the Committee evidence through the testimony of Professor
Hobbs, who used them as apt examples of “scientism, ,r but the valu*
able material in our Kinsey file never saw the light of day.

4 Reece Committee Hearings , p. 54,

352 APPENDIX Bi STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

MR. HAYS AND FACTS FORUM

On a number of occasions, I urged Mr. Hays to give us any com*
plaints against foundations of which he became aware, so that we
could run these down. I told him particularly that almost all the
complaints with political connotations which we had received con-
cerned left-wing activity, and that I had made every effort to dig out
complaints against foundations which might be engaged in activity
at the other end of the political spectrum. None of sufficient im-
portance to warrant further inquiry had come to my attention. I made
clear that I was interested in investigating extremism at either end.

His only major contribution in response was repeatedly to insist
that we investigate Facts Forum. We complied with all his specific
requests. We collected for him voluminous detailed data on Facts
Forum . He wanted control of these data himself . They were all
handed to him — whatever he asked for was procured and delivered.

This material was never used by Mr. Hays, except to prepare a
personal, private brief of his own against Facts Forum, which he
caused to be published in the Congressional Record . None of his ma-
terial was offered to the Committee of which he was a member. None
of it became part of the Committee’s record, from which he withheld
it.

Mr. Hays thus failed to use the forum presented by the Committee
of which he was a member but chose, instead, to attack this particular
foundation in a forum where it could not possibly defend itself or
even file a protest — the floor of the House of Representatives.

MR. HAYS AND THE COMMITTEE PROCEDURE

In his minority report, Mr. Hays indulged in gross misstatements
concerning my recommendations regarding procedure. He said:

In the early meetings of the committee the general counsel,
Mr. Wormser, advanced the proposal that the inquiry be made
without public hearings and without seeking the testimony of
interested persons, suggesting instead that the staff be directed to
devote its time to independent study and inquiry, the results of
which would be brought to the committee when concluded. It
apparently never occurred to Mr. Wormser, a member of the bar,
that such a proceeding, in a matter so sensitive, inevitably con-

MR. HAYS AND COMMITTEE PROCEDURE 353

flictcd with constitutional guarantees of free speech and violated
every American principle that individuals and groups, subjected
to accusations in die course of an inquiry, be permitted to defend
themselves.*

On reading the minority report, I wrote at once to Mr. Hays calling
his attention to a misstatement regarding the identity of Mr. Koch
and myself and also to this absolutely false description of my pro-
posals for procedure. Regarding the latter, I wrote as follows:

You state that I suggested closed hearings without the presence
of witnesses. This is not the fact. I did suggest that we might
consider having closed hearings, but only in order to avoid the
publicity which you yourself had objected to and for the purpose
of preventing any injury to the reputations of individuals who
would be called as witnesses. You, later on, yourself urged the
Committee to hear some of the testimony in private, a procedure
which I had thought from the start might be advisable for the
same reasons you came to understand were persuasive. I never
suggested to you or anyone else that we dispense with calling
witnesses.

Mr. Hays replied immediately and apologized for his misstatements,
but they remain in the printed minority report.

Fortunately, Mr. Reece thoroughly understood that detailed re-
search was essential to satisfy our mandate. There was never any
question of avoiding hearings, but hearings without research would
have been futile.

As the time for hearings approached, lawyers for a number of foun-
dations asked me how we expected to proceed. I informed them that
it was planned first to put a series of critical witnesses on the stand,
to introduce enough substantive evidence to support whatever criti-
cisms the staff had found prima facie to be justified. In this way, the
foundations themselves would know to what to reply. Foundation
representatives had then asked whether they could not be presented
with a "bill of particulars.'1 I was very sympathetic to this suggestion
and assured them that we had no intention of surprising them with
critical material, that every effort would be made to let them have it
in advance of foundation appearances on the stand.

• Reece Committee Report , p. 426,

354 APPENDIX Bi STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

The canard has been spread widely that the Reece Committee
“prejudged’* the foundations. It was the Committee’s own fairness of
approach which was used as a basis for this slander. At a meeting of
the Committee, about a week before the day set for the opening hear-
ing, I proposed that we give the foundations the “bill of particulars"
which they had requested. This recommendation was approved unan-
imously and, in the case of Mr. Hays, with enthusiasm. Yet he him-
self later accused us of having “prejudged" by presenting this very
“bill of particulars.**

THE “ DODD REPORT "

In the presence of the Committee, and with its approval, I re-
quested Mr. Dodd, the director of research, to prepare this “bill of
particulars.*’ He did this in the form of a report which' he read at the
first hearing, disclosing to the foundations the main lines of criticism
of foundation practices which he had found sufficiently supported by
evidence to warrant the attention of the Committee.

For the “Dodd report" to have been distorted into a report of the
Committee itself, constituting a final verdict against the foundations,
was a palpable absurdity; yet this became the cry of the pack which
yelped at our heels during the entire investigation. That report was
in no sense a report of the Reece Committee. No member of the Com-
mittee, not even the chairrnan, knew what was in it before it was read .
It was a personal report of the director of research to the Committee .
It reviewed the methods he and his assistants had used. It stated the
lines of inquiry which he suggested. It listed the criticisms of founda-
tion activity which he, personally, had concluded were justified, based
on the research which had been conducted. It was intended to be, and
was, the very “bill of particulars'* which the foundations themselves
had requested.

Mr. Dodd was careful to state that the conclusions contained in his
report were meant to be only tentative — he was, after all, merely
presenting material for inquiry. Both the chairman and I made it
explicitly clear, at the first and second hearings. May 10 and n, that
the purpose of the Dodd report was “to give the foundations an
opportunity to know what most important matters we want to go into
in relation to them."

During the investigation I was to learn that faith in the reasonable
accuracy of news reporting was naive. Many of the reporters who

THE "DODD REPORT" 3 55

attended the hearings dozed or chatted while vitally important testi-
mony was being taken; but awoke to scribble notes whenever Mr.
Hays staged one of his antics. Few newspapers gave the public even
a reasonable summary of what was taking place. A wisecrack by
Mr. Hays would make headlines while the story of a tragically serious
foundation error would go unreported. On some papers, notably The
New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune and The Wash-
ington Post-Times , die editors were apparently determined, whatever
might transpire at the hearings, to persuade the public that the Com-
mittee majority members were persecutors and that Mr. Hays was a
knight in shining armor, protecting the virtue of the immaculate
foundations. I do not remember one instance in which any of the
three newspapers I have named commented critically on Mr. Hays's
amazing behavior.

These papers knew that the duty of the Committee was to investi-
gate criticism, yet they castigated it for presenting critical material.
They knew that the Dodd report was merely a personal report by the
research director, yet they deliberately misconstrued it into an official
and final report of the Committee itself. They knew that its purpose
(repeated again and again throughout the hearings) was to inform
the foundations and to forestall surprise; yet they beat Mr. Reece
about the ears incessantly for having dared to permit the issues to be
named which the staff thought worth investigating.

Mr. Koch and I had not had an opportunity to see the last draft of
Mr. Dodd's report until the evening before the first hearing, at which
it was to be presented. While it was to be his personal report, it was
appropriate for counsel to examine it to see whether any constructive
suggestions could be made. Accordingly, although it had already
been mimeographed because time was so short, we did make sugges-
tions for change, chiefly of a literary and emphasis character. With all
possible speed, a final draft was prepared and mimeographed and
presented to the Committee the following day, but after the first hear-
ing (a morning hearing only) had closed. This gave rise to an in-
volvement with Mr. Hays which exposed his plan to throw all possible
confusion into the hearings.

In some not too mysterious fashion, he had gotten possession of the
earlier draft of the Dodd Report, though this had been distributed
to no one. Immediately, he invented a plot. He accused Mr. Dodd of
having produced two reports, one "doctored" to fool the Committee,

356 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

or the foundations, or the public, or perhaps just Mr. Hays. This
required Miss Casey to take the stand to explain that the draft was
only a working draft, not issued to anyone, and that there had been
no “doctoring/1

In questioning Mr. Dodd concerning this incident, Mr. Hays re*
minded him that he was under oath. It was a rather sorry procedure
on Mr. Hays's part — an attempt to make it look reprehensible that a
draft of a report had been revised before it was submitted.

I asked Mr. Hays to delete his use of the word “doctored" from the
record, and he refused to. To the end, he tried to leave the impression
that there had been two reports and that, for some felonious pur-
pose, the staff had “doctored" one of them. It was typical of the Hays
campaign to discredit the staff; and this obvious red herring was
exploited gleefully by some newspapers, happy to try to disparage the
investigation.

THE WITNESSES

Pursuant to the agreed procedure, the report of Mr. Dodd was
followed by a succession of witnesses, intended to present material
substantiating the criticisms which had been leveled at foundations.
With our budget for the year cut almost in half by the Committee on
Administration, we had to plan for enough sessions to bring in
representatives of those foundations against whom the principal criti-
cisms had been made. Our decision was to call a minimum of care-
fully selected critical witnesses of demonstrable credibility and to
supplement their testimony with detailed staff reports, preliminary to
hearing the foundation representatives themselves.

The witnesses not representing foundations called by the Com-
mittee can be put into three groups. The first consisted of staff
members (Mr. Dodd, the research director; the assistant research
director, Mr. McNiece; and the legal analyst, Miss Casey) who pre-
sented prepared reports. The second group consisted of four acad-
emicians: Dr. Thomas H. Briggs, professor emeritus in education
at Columbia; Dr. A. H. Hobbs, an assistant professor in sociology at
the University of Pennsylvania; Dr. David N. Rowe, a professor of
international affairs at Yale; and Dr. Kenneth Colegrove, a former
professor of politics at Northwestern. The third group consisted of
, persons who produced special testimony. This included Mr. T. Cole-
man Andrews, the Collector of Internal Revenue, and Mr, Sugar*

THE WITNESSES 357

man, then one of his assistants; Mr. Ken Earl, an attorney from the
State of Washington who had been on the staffs of the Internal Security
Subcommittee and of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Senate;
and Mr. Aaron Sargent, an attorney of San Francisco.

Mr. Hays and his friends have referred to these witnesses by a
variety of deprecatory and insulting terms. Mr. Hays himself several
times called them "crackpots" and added that the chairman had
'"dredged them up" and "dredged deep." Dr. Hutchins has called
them "witnesses of dubious standing." Mr. Henry Edward Schultz,
national chairman of The Anti-Defamation League, has referred to
the investigation as a "charade" in which part of the cast was "a
strange group of witnesses."

Typical is the case of the late Mr. Bernard DeVoto who, in an
article in Harper’s, almost exhausted the thesaurus in selecting words
of insult. He said of the report: "This mass of innuendo, insinuation,
allegation, and misstatement is too insubstantial to be dealt with
critically." Unable to deny the facts, Mr, DeVoto sought to blast the
individuals who were connected with the report. He called the staff
"paranoiacs" and by other choice epithets. He suggested that some of
the witnesses before the Committee were psychiatric cases. He opined
that the staff must have been either insane or dishonest — adding that
insanity was not likely to be the answer.

Of similar nature was a recent attack on the Reece Committee by
Mr. Dwight Macdonald, in his series of "Profiles" on The Ford
Foundation in The New Yorker .* Although Mr. Macdonald himself
provided column after column of severe criticism of foundation
operation, much of it echoing specific criticisms levied by the Recce
Committee report, he had this to say about the Committee:

The hearings * • * were largely devoted to the animadversions
of obscure crackpots and the scarcely more lucid testimony of the
Reece Committee’s staff.

Among these witnesses labeled as obscure "crackpots" were Profes-
sor Emeritus Briggs of Columbia, Assistant Professor Hobbs of Penn-
sylvania, Professor Rowe of Yale, and Professor Colegrove of North-
western.

The Committee report, said Mr. Macdonald, was "a patchwork of
data botched together," He called the report "a lengthy exercise — four
* Since published in book form.

358 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

hundred and sixteen pages — in irrelevance, insinuation, and long-
range deduction/' He did not deal with the facts which the Committee
disclosed — Mr. Macdonald did not deign to discuss them. The way to
get at the Reece Committee was to call its personnel namesl This
was the “smearing” procedure of critics of the type of Messrs. DeVoto
and Macdonald.

A large part of the daily press was equally prejudiced against the
Committee and avoided an objective presentation or appraisal of its
findings and activities.

I can well realize how difficult it was for the man in the street to
understand that organizations which had done so much good in some
areas could also have behaved so badly in others.

MR. HAYS BROWBEATING A WITNESS

It was during the testimony of Mr. Aaron Sargent that Mr. Hays
conducted himself in a manner without any precedent. In order to
prevent testimony unfavorable to certain foundations and tax-ex-
empt organizations, he treated this witness, and the Committee itself,
contemptuously and offensively. His intention to prevent an orderly
hearing became soon apparent.

Mr. Sargent was so well informed regarding foundation opera-
tions in education that he had been approached by Congressman Cox,
chairman of the Cox Committee, to act as counsel to that Committee.
As the Cox Committee had been created by a Democratic-controlled
Congress, this made it difficult for Mr. Hays to attack the witness*
credibility directly, but he found a way to do it by accusing him of
perjury.

Mr. Hays asked Mr. Sargent on the stand whether he had been of-
fered the position of counsel to the Cox Committee. The latter re-
plied that he had, but had declined for personal reasons. Actually, no
official offer had been made. Congressman Cox had asked him if he
would consider taking the position, and the Committee itself had au-
thorized Chairman Cox to do tltis. But Mr. Hays made a great to*do
about the fact that Mr. Sargent had answered “yes” when he was
asked if he had been “offered” the job, This, said Mr. Hays, was “per-
jury!”

Mr. Sargent began to testify at 10 o'clock a.m. on May 24 but was
unable to give uninterrupted testimony for more than a few mo-
ments at a time; Mr. Hays heckled him all day. He was not satisfied

MR. HAYS BROWBEATING A WITNESS 359

to wait, for any substantial testimony to be given and then to cross-
examine; he cluttered the record with irrelevancies and tried his best
to upset the witness. Here is an example of Mr. Hays’s questioning:

Mr. Hays. Do you believe in astrology?

Mr. Sargent. No, sir; not I.

Mr. Hays. Could you give me any reason why there arc so
many peculiar people drawn to southern California?

Mr. Sargent. I don't live in southern California, and I
wouldn't know.

Mr. Hays. You know, it is a funny thing, but every time wc
get an extremist letter in my office — and it is either on the left
or the right — you don't have to look at the postmark. It either
comes from southern California or Houston, Texas. I just won-
der if there is some reason for it.

There were endless interruptions of this illuminating kind; Mr.
Hays’s histrionics for the benefit of the gallery of newsmen were at
the same time calculated to confuse the witness, an objective in
which he failed utterly. But he resorted to far nastier tactics also,
hoping to irritate the witness into an indiscretion; in this he failed as
miserably. But he did succeed, through theatrical touches and
"colorful” antics, to intrigue a newspaper claque.

It would take too much space to quote ali his breaches of decency
during Mr. Sargent's testimony. But one remark was typical. He said,
"I will tell you if we bring any more down here like some we have now
I am in favor of the committee hiring a staff psychiatrist.” * This
could only have referred to the witnesses who had testified up to that
time. These were three members of the staff and Professor Briggs,
Professor Hobbs, and the witness before him, Mr. Sargent. But later,
Mr. Hays explained, "I did not mean to cast any reflection on the
other 2 witnesses as much as I did on the one here, to be frank about
it." f

Mr. Hays sought to induce the Committee to stop Mr. Sargent's
testimony in open hearings and to resume it in secret session. When
the chairman refused to accede, Mr. Hays "took a walk” accompanied
by his cohort, Mrs. Pfost, leaving the hearing room. As only three
members of the Committee were present at the time, this left the chair-

• Reece Committee Hearings , p. 222.

■flbid.j p. 530.

360 APPENDIX Bi STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

man alone and he was forced to close the hearings for want of a
quorum. That was at 3:20 p.m., very little having been accomplished
in the taking of testimony, for the whole day virtually was consumed
by Mr. Hays's antics.

The Committee met again at about 10:30 the next morning, at
which time the full membership was present. Proceedings were opened
with a statement from the Chairman, in part as follows:

* * • As a convenience to the foundations, an initial report
was submitted outlining the main lines of major criticisms oE
foundations which a preliminary study by the staff had shown
were sufficiently supported by evidence to warrant considering
carefully.

We are now in the first stage of assessing these criticisms by hear-
ing some of the supporting evidence. We shall later hear evi-
dence supplied by the foundations themselves, defending against
these criticisms. We shall not prejudge. We shall not try to prove
a case. We are here to learn what the truth may be.

Needless to say, criticism cannot be expected to come from the
foundations themselves. It must come, if at all, chiefly from per-
sons not directly connected with foundation matters. We shall
give foundation representatives respectful attention. We do not
see why persons who have criticism to offer are not entitled to the
same courteous treatment. Failure to give them such courtesy
and inclination to condemn them for daring to criticize frankly
and even severely would seem to me to deny such witnesses the
privileges of citizens and to fail to give them the consideration
to which we believe they are entitled from members of the com-
mittee.

Mr. Hays then raised the point of order that the witness Sargent had
not prepared a written statement for submission to the committee un-
der the House rules which provided that such statements should be re-
quired “so far as practicable/' The point of order was overruled on
the ground that it was impracticable in Mr. Sargent's case. The fol-
lowing colloquy then took place:

Mr. Hays. The Chair would not uphold any point of order
that he did not agree with, no matter what the rule said. That
has become pretty obvious in these hearings.

MR. HAYS BROWBEATING A WITNESS 361

The Chairman. Now—

Mr. Hays. Don't start interrupting me, or you better bring in
the sergeant at arms, because I am going to be heard just the
same as you are. You may be afraid of Fabian socialism, but I
am afraid of Republican dictatorship. Let us get it out in the
open. You brought in the shock troops here, so let us fight it
out.

Mr. Goodwin. I understood we were going to hear the witness.
Mr. Hays. We are going to have more points of order.

The second point of order is that the committee is in violation
of the rules of the House and the Reorganization Act, inasmuch
as the minority of the committee has been deprived of one single
staff member.

The Chairman. The Chair overrules the point of order.

Mr. Hays. I will say the Chair did not keep his word. When I
helped the Chair get his $65,000, so you would not look stupid
when they were going to shut you off, you promised me a staff
member. Did you or did you not?

The Chairman. No one has individually a member of the
staff.

Mr. Hays. You have the whole staff.

The Chairman. There is a member of the staff that was env
ployed on the recommendation of the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. Hays. As a stenographer.

The Chairman. No; not as a stenographer.

Mr. Hays. That is what she does.

The Chairman. As an analyst or researcher, I am not sure
what her title is. That is what our understanding is.

Mr. Hays. I have a motion to make. I move that we hear this
witness in executive session in order to prevent further name
dropping and any further hurting of people who have no place
in this hearing.

Mrs. Pfost. I second it,

Mr. Wolcott, As a substitute for that, Mr. Chairman, I move
that the witness be allowed to proceed with his statement without
interruption.

Mr. Hays. You can pass all those motions you want, but I will
interrupt whenever X feel like it. How do you like that? So you
might as well save your breath, Jesse.

362 APPENDIX B; STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

Mr. Wolcott, I should like to.

Mr. Hays. You run the Banking and Currency Committee
without proxies, but in this committee you run it with proxies.
You make the rules as you go along for the majority, and I will
make the rules for myself as I go along, and if this fellow does
not want to bring in a statement, I will interrupt him whenever
I feel like it. He better get a bigger mouth than that.

Mr. Wolcott. As I understand it, this committee made the
rules, and we are proceeding under the rules adopted by this
committee.

Mr. Hays. You know there is no such rule on this committee.
When did we make this rule?

Mr. Wolcott. I understand we can vote by proxy. If we do not,
I shall make a motion that we do vote by proxy. I understood
that I have given the chairman a proxy and there had been no
objection to it.

Mr. Hays. I just want the record to show that you rule one
way in the committee of which you are chairman and another
way here.

Mr. Wolcott. You can make that record if you want to. The
Banking and Currency Committee of 29 members have asserted
themselves on a good many occasions, and we get along very
nicely in that committee and with the rules of the House. Until
the Banking and Currency Committee changes the rules, we will
abide by the rules which have been adopted, if any have been
adopted. I do not remember that any have been adopted. We
operate under the rules of the House.

Does anybody want to support a substitute motion? I move a
substitute motion to the motion made by the gentleman from
Ohio that the witness be allowed to proceed with his statement
without interruption, and at the conclusion of his statement
that he subject himself to questioning.

Mr. Goodwin. Second.

Mr. Hays. I have something to say on that motion. It might
take quite a little while. In the first place, what this motion en-
tails is that this fellow can come in here and do what he did
yesterday.

Mr. Goodwin. Who is "the fellow," may I inquire?

Mr. Hays. Right down here.

MR. HAYS BROWBEATING A WITNESS 363

Mr. Goodwin. You mean the witness?

Mr. Hays. I will call him anything I like. We understand each
other.

Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Chairman, I have something else to do be-
sides—

Mr. Hays. Go ahead. Whenever you go, the minority will go,
and that will be the end of the hearing.* If you can just stay here
and be patient, I have a right to be heard on the substitute and I
am going to be heard on the substitute.

The Chairman. Reasonably.

Mr. Hays. I will decide what is reasonable. In other words,
you know the trouble around here — and this is pertinent, too —
that there have been too many committees in which the mi-
nority has allowed itself to be gafTled into submission and silence.
I am going to be the kind of minority that does not go so easy
for that gaffle stuff.

Mr, Wolcott. You have been in the minority for 20 years.
Mr. Hays. You know the funny part of it is that most of you
fellows are still in the minority, because you don't seem to have
the responsibility to run this Congress. That is why the great
crusade is in reverse.

Mr, Wolcott. If the minority will allow us to assume our
responsibility, we will get along.

Mr. Hays. The minority on this committee is not going to sit
here silent and have peoples' characters assassinated at will by
dropping their names in as Senator Douglas' name was dropped
in yesterday, deliberately, because it was one of only two names
the witness mentioned out of a whole series of names. He had
his name underscored in the pamphlet that he was reading
from. He had the name "Paul Douglas" underscored.

The Chairman. But the others were being put in the record.
Mr. Hays. At my insistence, let the record show.

The Chairman. No, they were being put in the record.

Mr. Hays. No, they were not being put in the record. The
only thing that was going into the record was what this gentle-
man was going to say. I said if you arc going to read — the record
is here, and if you want to start reading from the record, I will
read from the record.

* A threat to do another "walkout/*

364 APPENDIX B; $10 RY OF REECE COMMITTEE

Mr. Wolcott, I ask for the question,

Mr. Hays. I am still talking.

Mr. Wolcott. I ask for the question.

Mr. Hays, Go ahead and ask. I say the gentleman is coming in
with a shotgun and shooting in all directions, and the committee
does not want to give protection to the people whose characters
he is going to assassinate. That is what the substitute motion does.
I think it is bad and in violation of the rules of the House. It is
in violation of the rules of orderly committee procedure which
you seem to be so concerned with. I just want the record to show
that if die majority wants to let people like this come in and do
that, that is up to them.

The Chairman. All in favor say "Aye/*

Mr. Wolcott. Aye.

Mr. Goodwin. Aye.

The Chairman. Opposed, "no.”

Mr. Hays. No.

Mrs. Pfost. No,*

After this and another exchange among the Committee members,
Mr. Sargent's testimony was resumed, only to be broken into con*
Stantly by Mr. Hays. When Mr. Wolcott reminded Mr. Hays that a
motion had been passed that the witness be permitted to conclude
a statement before being questioned, Mr. Hays threatened to leave
the hearing again and stop it for lack of a quorum. He also accused
Mr. Wolcott of trying to “gag the minority/1 and continued his con-
stant interruption.

These persistent interruptions, violating the perfectly proper rule
made by the Committee (after unconscionably numerous interrup-
tions by Mr. Hays made it necessary) that the witness was to be ques-
tioned only after he had completed his testimony, ultimately resulted
in a conference among the Committee members, in which Mr. Hays
finally agreed that the witness be permitted to complete his testimony
without interruption and be available for full questioning thereafter
at any length. After the announcement of this agreement had been
made, Mr. Sargent proceeded with his testimony but was immediately
interrupted by Mr. Hays, in violation of his agreement, and the in-
terruptions continued at Mr, Hays’s normal pace, which meant that

• Jlbtd., pp. 237-240,

MR, HAYS DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF 365

the witness could hardly finish a sentence before Mr. Hays tried to
divert him,

MR. HAYS DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

At one point, Mr. Sargent had cited Fabianism in Great Britain, an
authoritative work on English socialism written by Sister Mary Mar-
garet McCarran, a daughter of the late Senator McCarran,

After Mr. Sargent’s testimony was later resumed, the following dis-
cussion took place:

Mr. Hays, ### Another thing you did, you brought in the
name of Sister Mary Margaret, and then you pause for emphasis
and put in the name of McCarran.

I submit to you that ordinarily people in the orders do not use the
last name and I wonder if it is in the flyleaf of the book.

Mr, Sargent. It is. I gave you the information about the au*
thor and the book.

Previously you had been questioning authority for the statements
I was making. I want to make clear that I was relying on a high-
type of research book in the statement that I made.

Mr. Hays. Maybe we ought to subpoena tine officials of the
Catholic University and And out how high type this is.

I happen to know something about the background of the author
of that book, and how long it took her to get a degree, and so
forth, and even that there was a little pressure used or she would
not have it yet,*

The rector of Catholic University wrote to Mr. Rcecef stating that
Mr. Hays’s allegations were "completely false." The publisher of Sis-
ter Mary Margaret's book had this to say{:

The attack upon the character of Sister Mary Margaret Patricia
as a nun, devoted to a life of teaching, with a vow of poverty and
complete worldly abandonment, is one of the most irresponsible,
thoughtless, and uncharitable acts that has ever come to my at*
tention.

I do not believe that in the records of the House of Representa*

* Ibid., p.231,

\Ibid.,p. 945.
t Ibid., p, 946,

366 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

tives there could be found a more striking example of an irre-
sponsible statement by a Member of that body.

Mr. Hays may well have created a record for intemperate and un-
parliamentary behavior while a member of the Reece Committee.

His interruptions of the testimony must have established a world's
record — the count was 246 interruptions during 185 minutes of Mr.
Sargent's testimony.

It seemed most incredible that none of the newspapers which at-
tacked the proceedings with such vigor ever thought anything Mr.
Hays did was subject to any criticism. The New York Times, The
New York Herald Tribune, The Washington Post-Times — none of
these ever saw anything reprehensible in Mr. Hays’s conduct.

MR. HERRING TAKES THE STAND

I had prepared a tentative schedule of intended foundation wit-
nesses who were to follow the initial, critical witnesses. This schedule
included representatives of the following foundations and tax-exempt
organizations:

Rockefeller Foundation
Carnegie Corporation

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Ford Foundation
Fund for the Republic
Social Science Research Council
American Council of Learned Societies
American Council on Education
National Education Association
American Historical Association
League for Industrial Democracy
American Labor Education Service

No foundation witness was to be compelled to appear, but such as
felt themselves aggrieved or as wished to be heard were to be given
the opportunity. Those listed above had indicated that they wished to
appear. I kept in touch with most of these organizations and tried to
inform them, as closely as I could, when they might be called upon
to appear if they wished to. And I made clear that they could appear

MR. HERRING TAKES THE STAND 367

by representatives of their own choosing, as we did not want any
criticism based on a contention that they had been unable to present
their own "case” in their own way.

We also anticipated calling Facts Forum, which had been subjected
to reiterated attack by Mr. Hays during the hearings and had asked
to appear, In addition, it was expected that we would give an oppor-
tunity to some individuals who had been mentioned in the testimony
adversely, to present their l,defenses.,,

The first foundation witness called was Mr. Pendleton Herring,
president of The Social Science Research Council — on June 16, 1954.
He was selected because his organization was one of those most di-
rectly concerned in the inquiry and because he, himself, was one of
the ablest publicists for the foundations. During his testimony other
foundation representatives were present, ready to testify. One, in
fact, Dr. Arthur S. Adams, president of The American Council on
Education, the expected second foundation witness, even handed in
his prepared statement, anticipating that he would be called imme-
diately on the conclusion of Dr. Herring's testimony. But Dr. Adams
was never called to the stand. The hearings ended during Mr. Her-
ring’s testimony.

Mr. Herring was treated with every possible courtesy. He was per-
mitted to testify at great length, reading in detail from prepared
statements without any interruptions except those of which he himself
approved, introducing whatever material he cared to. He testified, in
his own way, for one entire afternoon. His testimony continued
through part of the next morning.

After the witness had exhausted his own material, Arnold Koch,
the associate counsel, began to question him on behalf of the Com-
mittee, Mr. Koch’s questions were gently put. No pressure was ex-
erted. It was not cross-examination, in the true sense. There was no
insistence on a direct answer. If Mr. Herring, as he sometimes did,
chose not to respond directly to a question, as he would have been re-
quired to in a court of law, the question was dropped and Mr. Koch
passed on to another.

But all this did not last long. Mr. Hays did not intend to permit
any foundation witness to be subjected to orderly questioning. At the
beginning of Mr. Herring’s testimony, the chairman had suggested
again that the witness be permitted to make his statement and then be
questioned. In contrast to his earlier conduct, Mr. Hays observed this

368 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

admonition and, while Dr. Herring was making his own statement,
questioned him rarely and only with the greatest politeness. His man-
ner changed, however, when Mr. Koch began his examination on be-
half of the Committee; then Mr. Hays proceeded to inject frequently,
this time intent not on interrupting the witness but on interrupting
the questioning by counsel.

This unpleasant situation came to a head* when someone from the
audience passed a paper to Mr. Hays, after which he quoted a verse
from the Bible: “Should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his
belly with the east wind?" This was a direct insult launched at Mr.
Koch.

There resulted a colloquy among Mr. Hays, the chairman, and Mr.
Goodwin, in which Mr. Hays, in violent temper, his voice loud and
strained, committed insolence after insolence. He accused the chair-
man of not being interested in getting at the facts. He referred to the
previous witnesses as “crackpots." He asserted that Mr. Herring was
the first witness "who has dealt with factual matters." He referred to
other witnesses as “people that you have gone out and dragged up
and dredged up." He continued:

And, Mr. Reece, you must have had to dredge to find Mr. Sar-
gent, and I could mention one or two more. You really had to
dredge. You went way down with your dredge to get them. They
are not reliable, responsive. [The chairman used the gavel.] Go
ahead and hammer. I will keep right on talking when you get
through.

This followed:

Mr. Goodwin. Now, Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman from Ohio
indicates that he is not going to respect the gavel, as he just in-
dicated, I am going to bring up here the question of whether or
not these hearings are being conducted according to the rules of
the House of Representatives, which are the rules of this com-
mittee.

Mr. Hays. Well, I have brought that question up before and
been overruled.

Mr. Goodwin. I am rather tired of this. We have an eminent
witness, who must, I suspect, or he may in his innermost con-

MR. HERRING TAKES THE STAND 369

seriousness, be coming to the realization that he spoke a little too
early in his praise of Congress, if this is an example of the way
congressional hearings are conducted.

Mr. Hays. I heard you say you are getting tired. Do you know
what I am getting tired of? I am tired of you taking one position
in public with pious speeches and then running to me in secret
and saying, “You know whose side my sympathies arc on.” Why
don't you act like a man?

Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask for the rules of
the House, and I am going to say that the gentleman from Ohio
is out of order. He is impugning the motives of the chairman and
the members of this committee.

Mr. Hays. You wouldn't say I am not telling the truth, would
you?

The Chairman. The gentleman is out of order. He has im-
pugned the integrity of every man about whom he has talked,*

After a few more exchanges of this nature, and one or two questions
put to the witness, the hearing was adjourned to the afternoon.

The chairman had employed unlimited patience throughout the
hearings, in the face of constant insolence and personal attack by Mr.
Hays. Mr. Reece had been determined not to let anything break up
the investigation. But there was a limit to what anyone could stand,
The explosion which I have just reported reached that limit in the
case of Mr. Reece and the other two majority members of the Com-
mittee. The cold record of the hearings cannot bring the incident, or
Mr. Hays's many previous disturbances, into proper light. It would
take a tape recording to add Mr. Hays’s arrogant voice, and a film to
record his aggressive and offensive manner.

I think Mr. Reece would have swallowed his pride and gone on
with the hearings, regardless of how much insolence he would have
had to continue to face, had it not been that Mr. Hays had now made
clear that he was not satisfied merely to have harassed the first group
of witnesses. He had shown his intention to block an orderly examina-
tion of foundation spokesmen.

In a conversation with me immediately following the Commit-
tee adjournment, Mr. Reece expressed concern about how to find the
best way to discharge our duty to the Congress and the people. He
• Ibid., pp. 861-864.

370 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

wanted time to think. Accordingly, when the afternoon session was
called to order, Mr. Reece made this statement:

The chairman feels very deeply the responsibility which he has
to protect the witnesses who appear before the committee, the
employees of the committee, and the members of the committee,
and to maintain the dignity of the committee, the dignity of the
House, and to uphold the rules of procedure of the House and
of the committees which operate under the procedures of the
House. In view of the very unfortunate incident that happened
this morning, following similar incidents, coupled with the fact
that Mr. Goodwin cannot be here at this time due to another
very important engagement which has developed, and also to
give time to reflect upon this very serious situation that con-
fronts the committee, the committee will stand in recess until
10 o'clock Tuesday morning.

After this statement, Mr. Hays contributed a lame and only partial
apology for his distressing conduct of the morning, which was not en-
tered in the record and was hardly adequate to obliterate the unhappy
incident which he had precipitated.

The hearing was then recessed until Tuesday, June 22. This hear-
ing was postponed until June 24, because of the chairman's absence
from Washington, and that, in turn, was postponed subject to later
call when Mr. Hays left Washington on June 24 to attend a funeral
in Hawaii.

♦

In the meantime, on June 21, Mr. Goodwin had written to the
chairman as follows:

I cannot be at the meeting on foundations tomorrow and in the
meantime want you to know I think there should be an immedi-
ate cancellation of all public hearings.

THE DECISION IS MADE

On July 2, after Mr. Hays had returned from Hawaii, the Com-
mittee met in executive session and the following resolution was
passed:

Now be it resolved that in lieu of further public hearings and
in order to expedite the investigation and to develop the facts in
an orderly and impartial manner f those foundations arid others

THE DECISION IS MADE 371

whose testimony the committee had expected to hear orally be
requested to submit to the committee through its counsel within
15 days sworn written statements of pertinence and reasonable
length for introduction into the record — such statements to be
made available to the press — and that the committee proceed
with the collection of further evidence and information through
means other than public hearings .

The basis of this decision, concurred in by the chairman, by Mr. Good-
win and by Mr. Wolcott, was that, in view of Mr. Hays's conduct, it
was impossible to continue hearings with propriety. The following
separate statement by Mr. Reece, attached to the majority report of
the Committee, reviews the facts leading to this decision:

STATEMENT OF B. CARROLL REECE SUPPLEMENTAL

TO THE MAJORITY REPORT
In view of the decision of the ranking minority member of the
Committee to file a minority report, copies of which will not be
made available to the other members of the Committee until re-
leased to the press, I feel it is desirable to include a brief summa-
tion of the attempts to frustrate the work of the Committee for
which the ranking minority member has been responsible.

It was made clear at the outset that the inquiry was to be an
objective study. In line with this purpose and after consultation
by Counsel with attorneys for some of the foundations, the Com-
mittee decided to inform the foundations in advance of the
main lines of criticism into which inquiry would be made, giv-
ing sufficient supporting evidence so that they would know what
to reply to in their own testimony. This decision was unanimous.
It seemed the most fair approach for the foundations.

In accordance with the unanimously agreed procedure, and also
by unanimous assent, Mr. Dodd, the Director of Research, pre-
pared an initial report to the Committee which was read into
the record at the first two hearings. This report, representing
his tentative personal observations after initial studies had been
made, was intended to indicate the main lines of inquiry. His re-
port stated:

"As this report will hereafter contain many statements
which appear to be conclusive, I emphasize here that each

372 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

one of them must be understood to have resulted from stud-
ies which were essentially exploratory* In no sense should
they be considered proved. I mention this in order to avoid
the necessity of qualifying each as made,,,

This statement could not be clearer. On the first day both the
Chairman and Counsel made the purpose of the report utterly
dear — it was “to give the foundations an opportunity to know
what most important matters we want to go into in relation to
them/' During the hearings this identification of Mr. Dodd's re-
port was repeated both by the Chairman and Counsel. Yet the
ranking minority member repeatedly asserted that the majority
had arrived at pre-judged dedsions. Newspapers reported him
as having said that this was an “Alice-in-Wonderland" investiga*
tion in which a decision had been made in advance of the trial of
a case. The majority submits that in taking this attitude the rank-
ing minority member intended to discredit and harass the in-
vestigation, and to impugn the good faith of the majority and of
the staff.

From the start, Mr. Hays has assumed an attitude of aggressive
suspicion and insulting distrust of the majority members and the
staff. He has said frequently that he has known in advance what
the majority was going to decide. The shoe is, in fact, on the
other foot. Mr. Hays could not have made clearer, from the be-
ginning of our work, that he intended to frustrate the investiga-
tion to the limit of his abilities, and to attempt wholly to “white-
wash" the foundations.

The lines have not been drawn in this Committee on a political
party basis. The opinions of the majority are not party-line opin-
ions. They are not “Republican" opinions, any more than the
opinions of the minority are “Democratic" opinions. Many Demo-
crats voted for the establishment of this Committee, and many
Republicans voted against it. There is no party significance what-
soever in this Committee's work, which crosses party lines, and I
am confident that our findings will find both supporters and op-
ponents in both parties.

Sixteen public hearings were held, in the course of which the
patient attempt was made by the Chairman to follow the pro-
cedure unanimously agreed upon in advance: that the main lines
of criticism to be Investigated were first to be aired, with sufficient

THE DECISION IS MADE 373

evidence to show the reasonableness o£ investigating them, after
which the foundations were to be brought into the hearings to
state their positions.

The last public hearing was held on June 17th. Further public
hearings were discontinued by a resolution passed by the major-
ity at an executive meeting on July 2, 1954.

The reason for the cessation of hearings was that the attitude
and conduct of the ranking minority member had made it im-
possible to conduct orderly hearings. Among the obstructive
and harassing acts of Mr. Hays — all of them during die public
sessions — were these:

He interrupted witnesses beyond all reason, attempting to
frighten witnesses and to disorganize both the initial presenta-
tions and orderly interrogation by others, In one session of 185
minutes he interrupted 246 times.

When, after harrowingly frequent interruptions by Mr. Hays,
great numbers of which were on extraneous matters, a rule was
passed by a majority that a witness was to be permitted to finish
his presentation before being questioned, Mr, Hays angrily re-
marked that he would pay no attention to any such rule and
would interrupt whenever he pleased; and this he continued to
do.

His interruptions were very frequently intemperate, both in
tone and substance, and in purposeful disregard of parliamentary
procedure and the rules of the House.

He repeatedly, and from the rostrum, vilified the staff and ac-
cused it of having prejudged the complaints against the founda-
tions.

He repeatedly, from the rostrum, vilified other members of
the Committee and questioned their good faith. He publicly
accused the Chairman of lying and being a coward; and ac-
cused Mr. Goodwin of duplicity and of cowardice. The following
excerpt from the record of the hearings which I, as Chairman,
had deleted from the printed record in an effort to achieve har-
mony and to maintain the dignity of the Committee and the
House, is illustrative of the violent and abusive remarks of Mr.
Hays:

The Chairman. Now, the gentleman from Ohio, I am sure,
is not going to get anybody worked up or irritated here. If he

374 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

has that in mind he might just as well subside, because the
Chairman for one has made up his mind that he is not going to
let any byplay get him out of temper. That would impair the
usefulness of this committee.

Mr. Hays. Let me say to the Chairman that I took his word
and he assured me his word was good, and if the time arose when
I felt that we needed somebody on the minority side that the
Chairman would put somebody on.

The Chairman. The conversation was that if the gen-
tleman from Ohio and his colleague should finally decide to
write a minority report, that a member of the staff would be
made available to cooperate with them on that.

Mr. Hays. No, that was not the agreement, because I don't
want any member of this staff writing a minority report for me.

The Chairman. I said cooperate.

Mr. Hays. Or to cooperate either.

The Chairman. And assist. That was the conversation. I
do not know what the gentleman had in mind.

Mr. Hays, I will say this to the gentleman, that out where
I come from we have a saying that if a man doublecrosses you
once, that is his fault; if he doublecrosses you twice, that is your
fault. X just want you to know you won’t get the second opportu-
nity.

The Chairman. Even that statement is not going to pro-
voke the Chairman, but there is no living man can justifiably say
that this Chariman — that this man who happens to be Chair-
man at this time — has ever doublecrossed anybody or he had
failed to keep his word.

Mr. Hays, I am saying both.

The Chairman. That is all right.

Mr, Hays. Is that clear enough? There is no inference
there, is there?

The Chairman. That does not disturb me a particle.

Mr. Hays. I know. You are pretty hard to disturb. I thought
they had more guts in Tennessee.*

* Author's foottiolc: In World War I. Congressman Reece was decorated with
the D.S.C., the D.S.M., the Purple Heart, and the Croix de Guerre with palra.
He was cited for bravery by Generals Edwards, Hale, and Lewis and by
Marshal P£tain.

THE DECISION IS MADE 375

The Chairman. You arc not going to provoke me. You
need not worry, I have already made up my mind on that.

In an effort to discredit a staff witness, he employed quotations
from papal encyclicals, bringing in by inference a religious is-
sue where it had no bearing.

He cast aspersions on the character and record of a Catholic
nun, the daughter of Senator McCarran,

He repeated vilified and openly insulted witnesses appearing
before the Committee. In a letter dated May 30, 1954, Professor
Kenneth Colegrove noted that Mr. Hays had insulted, vilified
and browbeaten a witness "in the most brutal fashion/* "On
thirty or more occasions" wrote Prof. Colegrove, "Congressman
Hays deliberately insulted the witness, and on numerous occa-
sions, he inferred that he xoas a liar . Throughout three days ,
Congressman Hays was allowed to interrupt the testimony with
irrelevant questions and to make distracting and insolent re-
marks, On the second day , even after Congressman Hays prom-
ised to refrain from interruptions [see page 638], he continued
to interrupt and insult the witness without rebuke from the
Chairman, [Note that die record will show that the Chairman
used unlimited patience to try to induce a reasonable attitude on
the part of Mr. Hays without converting the hearings into an
open brawl.] I doubt whether the entire history of Congres-
sional investigations will show more unfair or cowardly attack
upon a witness than the treatment accorded to Mr, Sargent, Ob-
viously no self-respecting scholar will care to testify before such
a Committee under such conditions,"

Mr. Hays referred in scurrilous terms to witnesses who had
been heard, using such expressions as suggesting that the Com-
mittee should have a psychiatrist present; referring to witnesses
as "crackpot asserting that diey had been "dredged up** by
the majority or the staff; asserting that not one single fact had
been adduced by the testimony; etc. Among these witnesses were
professors of repute and eminence. In a letter to the Chairman
dated June 21, 1954, Professor Hobbs referred to the conduct
of Mr. Hays and said that an atmosphere was created "of fear
among competent persons who might otherwise question the
omniscience of the directors of those foundations. Witnesses are

376 APPENDIX Bi STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

thereby warned that no matter how objective their testimony >
no matter how legitimate their questions, their character will
be smeared and their testimony ridiculed. Such threats add sub •
stance to an existing awareness that any pointed questioning of
anti-intellectual or unscientific activities of these foundations
will seriously handicap or permanently destroy an academic
career ”

The first witness who might be called a spokesman for the foun-
dations was Mr. Pendleton Herring, President of the Social
Science Research Council. After Mr, Herring had stated what
he wished, and at great length, the Committee’s Associate Coun-
sel began cross-examination, whereupon the ranking minority
member of the Committee immediately made plain that he would
not permit sequential, orderly examinations. Starting with an
insult to the Associate Counsel, he indicated by his conduct
that he intended to frustrate the cross-examination of foundation
representatives by counsel and to prevent the eliciting of any
material unfavorable to the foundations. The record of that
last hearing on June 17th will show that a final incident of inter-
ference by Mr. Hays with orderly procedure justified the major-
ity in concluding that no further hope existed of conducting
public hearings properly in view of Mr. Hays1 intransigence and
refusal to obey rules of decency and propriety.

Among the other difficulties for which the ranking minority mem-
ber was responsible was the loss, in the middle of its work, of
two of its ablest investigators, released at the insistence of the
ranking minority member who indicated that he would otherwise
oppose any additional appropriation for the Committee. It was
felt advisable to comply with this demand rather than to risk the
abandonment of the investigation for lack of funds. The loss
of the two investigators was a severe one. Several extremely valu-
able projects which had been started by the released investigators
were left unfinished, and the remainder of the staff could not add
the completion of these studies to their own heavy schedules. It
is the belief of the undersigned that the demand for the release
of the two investigators was prompted by their very evident
ability and information.

One more comment upon the termination of the hearings. Some
of the foundation statements filed with the Committee have

THE FOUNDATION STATEMENTS 377

been more than intemperate in castigating this Committee for
ending the hearings. The Ford Foundation, for example, said:
"We therefore regard the decision of the Committee to dis-
continue public hearings and to limit the foundations' defense
to written statements or closed sessions as a puzzling and un-
expected act of injustice."

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was even more
belligerent. It commenced its statement with an introductory
paragraph which is an affront to a committee of the Congress of
the United States. Other foundations approached this insolence
in their statements.

What impresses this Committee, in relation to these unwarranted
and intemperate remarks, is the fact that none of these founda-
tions interposed any objections to the harassments to which this
Committee was subjected in the course of its work. Indeed, some
foundations very obviously worked closely with the ranking mi-
nority member of the Committee in his attempts to frustrate
the investigation.

B. CARROLL REECE

So the end came. It had been bad enough to have to sit through Mr.
Hays's indecent treatment of the previous witnesses. When he made
clear that he would not permit the orderly examination of witnesses
for the foundations by Committee counsel, the majority of the Com-
mittee, after thinking the problem through very carefully, decided
that hearings must close. The time which would have been consumed
in listening to Mr. Hays and getting nothing out of the foundation
witnesses except what their written statements contained, could be
better used in sober analysis of the testimony to date, the collateral
written materials, and statements which the foundations might wish to
submit.

Some critics of the investigation have implied that the hearings were
closed as part of a preconceived plan to prevent the foundations
from defending themselves. This is a preposterous falsehood.

THE FOUNDATION STATEMENTS

The problem remained of giving the criticized foundations a fair
opportunity to put into the record, for the Committee's consideration,
whatever material they deemed of consequence.

378 APPENDIX B: STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

The canard has been spread that the foundations were not given
a chance to present their "case.” An example of the spread of this
falsehood is to be found in a booklet of which 35,000 copies have
been purchased and circulated free by that creature of The Ford
Foundation, The Fund for the Republic. This propaganda booklet is
entitled The Fifth Amendment To-Day, and was written by Dean
Griswold of the Harvard Law School, who is himself a trustee of The
Fund for the Republic.

In his booklet, Dean Griswold, referring to the Reece Committee,
had this to say:

After developing the case against the foundations, this committee
closed its hearing without giving the foundations a chance to
present their defense. Such conduct is hardly calculated to foster
confidence in the fairness of committee investigations.

Such writing as this is ‘‘hardly calculated to foster confidence in the
fairness of” an educator. Dean Griswold knew that many foundations
filed full statements with the Committee, including The Fund for the
Republic, of which he is a trustee, and its parent, The Ford Founda-
tion, which in its statement exhibited pride in the work of its progeny.
He must have known also that these statements were immediately re-
leased to the press upon receipt by the Committee and were printed
in full in the record of its proceedings.

Foes of the Committee have quite consciously misrepresented the
facts to the public in failing to state fairly the reasons for the ma-
jority decision to terminate the public hearings — and in falsely imply-
ing, instead, that the purpose was to forestall the foundations' de-
fending themselves. The fact is that the foundations were given the
fullest opportunity to present their positions, of which they took full-
est advantage.

They followed the hearings closely. Most had representatives pres-
ent, eminent counsel as well, and even "public relations counselors"!
They received daily transcripts of the testimony. They knew exactly
what criticisms had been made of them. They had plenty of time, per-
sonnel, and money to answer in full, and they were given the opportu-
nity to do so. They did, in fact, present long statements. The printed
record contains about 70 pages devoted to the full testimony of Mr.
Herring, president of The Social Science Research Council and a ma-

THE FOUNDATION STATEMENTS 379

jor spokesman of the foundation complex. In addition, the printed
record contains statements of other foundations as follows:

Carnegie Corporation

over

*5 pages

League for Industrial Democracy

over

22

it

American Council of Learned Societies

11

it

American Council on Education

7

it

Ford Foundation

over

it

Fund for the Republic

over

2

ft

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Rockefeller Foundation and General Education

10

Board

85

ft

National Education Association

8

it

Foreign Policy Association

6

H

TOTAL

over

212

If

In addition, the following statements were included which had
been submitted by individuals associated with foundations:

Bernard L. Gladieux, of The Ford Foundation
Joseph H. Willits, of The Rockefeller Foundation
Walter Gellhorn, of Columbia University over

Mortimer Graves, of The American Council of
Learned Societies, in the form of an answer to
questions of Committee Counsel

TOTAL

» .

Thus, the total extent of the printed record devoted to material sup-
plied by foundation representatives and associates, including the tes-
timony of Mr. Herring, aggregated 313 pages.*

The statements filed by foundations were printed in full, without
deletion or alteration in any respect, just as they had been filed. They
were, in their mass, extremely disappointing. They were characterized
by an evasion of the specific issues raised in the testimony and a fail-
ure to face the detailed evidence. They were glib, self-adulatory, given
to glittering generality, frequently abusive; in general, they main-

13 pages

5

4

M

fl

»

31

n

• Pages of about G50 words each, in the case of the statements.

380 APPENDIX B; STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

tained that the respective foundations were beyond and above any
serious criticism.

By filing statements without being subjected to questioning on
the stand, the foundations could, and certainly did, make many state-
ments which would not have stood up under questioning. They
avoided the danger of being confronted, in open hearing, with the
necessity of attempting to explain acts and procedures which were ex-
tremely difficult to justify.

Nor did they lose the opportunity to have their case get to public
notice. Their statements received the widest newspaper treatment, in
many instances being printed in full in some of the press, particu-
larly in The New York Times , which gave publicity to these state-
ments far wider than would normally have been the case in the event
of a mere reporting of testimony. The filing of the uncensored pre-
pared statements, promptly delivered under authority of the Com-
mittee to individual newspapers and to the press services, gave the
complaining foundations the widest possible publicity for their “case,"

THE PREPARATION OP THE REPORT

When the hearings closed, early in July, at least four or five more
months of intensive research should have been possible, and an ade-
quate staff to assist in assembling, digesting and organizing the ma-
terials. But its financial condition forced the Committee to release the
entire staff by August i, except for a skeleton crew necessary to do
what was referred to as “house-cleaning." The associate counsel (Mr,
Koch), the director of research (Mr. Dodd), his assistant (Mr. Mc-
Niece), and almost all the rest of the group left on August 1. The
only major staff member remaining was Miss Casey. Miss Lonergan
was still on the payroll but, once the hearings had started, she had
ceased to be of any service in research or in other ways to the Com-
mittee in general — she spent all her time assisting Mr. Hays.

Miss Casey took the burden of the extensive executive work which
remained, while I worked on the draft of the report, clearing fre-
quently with Mr. Reece. In some miraculous way, perhaps by working
twenty-six hours a day. Miss Casey managed to complete some addi-
tional and very valuable research.

After the Committee members had had time to study the draft of
the report, a meeting was called at which all were present except

THE "STRAW MEN" 381

Mrs. Pfost, who was represented by Mr. Hays as proxy. Miss Casey
and I were also present In the discussions which ensued, it was un-
derstood that certain material was to be added to the draft which had
not been included but was carefully described, including its Appen-
dix, which I did not prepare.

I had expected “fireworks” at this meeting from Mr. Hays. To my
amazement, he was calmness itself. He voted, on behalf of himself
and Mrs. Pfost, against the report. But his only concern seemed to be
that he be given an opportunity to present a minority report, Messrs.
Wolcott and Reece approved of the majority report in its entirety
and voted for it. Mr. Goodwin voted for it but stated that he ob-
jected to parts of it and asked the right to file a separate statement
with the report, dissenting in part.

This was all arranged amicably. A date was set for the public re-
lease of the majority report, and it was agreed that a minority report
might be filed and released simultaneously, even though the majority
would not have had an opportunity to read it before its release. It
was also agreed that any Committee member might file a separate,
personal statement at the same time,

The minority report was filed in accordance with this agreed proce-
dure, and die majority did not see it until it was released to the press.
Mr. Goodwin missed the deadline and did not get his separate state-
ment in until after the full document had gone to press, was finally
printed, and was released. His separate statement was, however, sepa-
rately mimeographed and released promptly to the press after receipt.

The short minority report set the theme for the subsequent criticism
of the Committee by its foes. It ignored the mass of convincing evi-
dence upon which the majority’s findings were based, and resorted to
considerable misstatement and to vituperative attacks on the majority,
counsel, and staff.

THE "STRAW MEN"

I have referred to the practice of the critics of the Reece Committee
of setting up straw men to have the pleasure of knocking them down,
I shall identify some of these creatures which they have tried to foist
upon the Committee,

i. The allegation that the Committee disapproved of foundations ,
(The Committee expressly held that foundations are very desirable.)

382 APPENDIX Bi STORY OF REECE COMMITTEE

2. The allegation that the Committee was critical of all founda-
tions. (The Committee criticized only a small number of the great
multitude of foundations.)

3. The allegation that the Committee disregarded the wonderful
work which some of the criticized foundations have accomplished for
society. (The Committee expressly applauded the many wonderful
works of some of the foundations which it criticized most heavily for
works which were not so wonderful. Its position, however, was that
many good works do not excuse those which are bad. The analogy
may not be expressly apt but it is illustrative — that a man cannot be
excused for an arson because he has been kind to the poor.)

4. The allegation that the Committee held that the advocacy of cer-
tain social and philosophical concepts, largely identified with social-
ism, should be repressed. (The position of the Committee was that an
individual was entitled to advocate radicalism of any color as much as
he pleased, but that it is a far different matter when we are dealing
with foundations. These are public trusts dedicated to the public and
operating with tax-exempt funds; it is to be expected of them, there-
fore, that they refrain from advocacy in the area of politics if they
claim continued tax exemption.)

5. The allegation that the Committee opposed “ empirical ” research .
(The Committee recognized not only the value but the necessity of
empirical research. It commented only on the excessive, unbalanced
favor for projects and persons identified with a faction among social
scientists dedicated to a pragmatic philosophy, to materialistic con-
cepts of history, and to Socialist goals. It considered the conformism
resulting from such favoritism as a danger for research, scholarship,
and education and as a political force ultimately controlling our gov-
ernment and affecting public welfare. Empirical research therefore
was not criticized in the intention to restrain scholarly pursuits or
academic freedom, but reviewed for the purpose of pointing to dan-
gers for our public life from the support by foundations of one
ideological and theoretical faction at the expense of all others. The
Committee wanted to attract attention to dangers of conformism and
the resulting fads and foibles in the social sciences.)

6. The allegation that the Committee was trying to exercise
44thought control” and advocated uniformity and conformity . (The
Committee could not have felt more strongly that it is essential to
our society that the freedom of research, freedom of inquiry, freedom

THE "STRAW MEN" 383

of opinion and freedom in general be maintained and protected. In-
deed! what disturbed it most was the mass of evidence leading to the
conclusion that some of the foundations and their cooperating, inter-
mediary organizations have tended to exercise or create a form of
"thought control'’ in the social sciences and education through an
imposition of conformity and uniformity by various means of intel-
lectual coercion. It was critical of the extent to which social scientists
have been tempted to conform to the favorite ideas, attitudes, and re-
search methods of the advisers and managers of grant-dispensing or-
ganizations. The observant scholar in search of support for a research
project soon learns to design his application for a grant so as to con-
form with the known preferences of the decision-making executives.
Because these executives of the major foundations and intermediary
organizations cooperate, the result is uniformity of thought, of goals,
and of methods.)

APPENDIX C

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE
COMMITTEE ON THE
PROPOSED OBJECTIVES
AND METHODS OF INVESTIGATION

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON TAX
EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS

October 23, 1953.

This memorandum, prepared by Counsel in collaboration with the
Director of Research, is the result of intensive application to the very
difficult task of planning the work of the staff. It must, necessarily,
be incomplete and tentative. The work itself, as it progresses, will de-
termine in great measure more precise directions. This is, moreover,
merely our own (tentative) conception of how our service to the
Committee should be rendered. We shall proceed upon it as a base,
except in so far as the Committee may direct us otherwise. We solicit
directions from the Committee and individual suggestion from all its
members.

We ask that this memorandum be kept confidential to avoid acci-
dental or premature publicity, or the transmission to others of plans
which are only tentative.

The intended lines of inquiry for this Committee are set forth in de-
tail in certain projects later herein described. Those questions which
have been most often raised and discussed (and they are specially
covered by House Resolution 817) are:

The extent to which foundtion funds have been used for un-
American and subversive purposes; and

The extent to which foundation funds have been used for politi-
cal purposes, propaganda or attempts to influence legislation.

384

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE 385

Before setting forth the proposed projects and all of the areas of
inquiry, we offer some reflections in the way of background material.

# * *

GENERAL BA CKGR 0 UND

Tax exempt foundations have already played an extremely impor-
tant part in our society, and are likely to become increasingly im-
portant. We do not agree with the opinion voiced by several witnesses
before the Cox Committee that the birth rate of large foundations will
decline in the future because of the impact of the tax laws. The tax
laws themselves tend to stimulate the use of foundations to solve the
problems (1) of paying the death taxes without sacrificing an enter-
prise, and (2) of management continuance. It is safe to say that the
use of foundations for basically tax purposes is on a rising curve,
Great numbers of foundations with but small capital today are essen-
tially vehicles to receive huge grants upon the death of their respec-
tive creators. We are personally aware of prospective foundation
funds aggregating many hundreds of millions of dollars which will
come into use upon the death of various individuals. It is our belief
that the next two or three decades should amplify the total capital of
the foundations by some billions of dollars.

Accordingly, the eventual, aggregate financial power of the founda-
tions will be immense. This power, intended to be benign, may not
always be so. The very financial power, carrying with it the ownership
of a considerable section of American industry, could wield a strong
influence upon our economic, political, and social life. In an address
at the University of Chicago last winter, on the subject of Family En-
terprises, General Counsel to this Committee predicted that, after a
period of years, a large part of American industry would come into
the hands of certain special ownership groups, such as pension trusts,
foundations, labor unions, and insurance companies. He pointed out
that such a development might, some day, necessitate the enactment
of laws similar to the Statutes of Mortmain in England which con-
fiscated lands of the Church because it had acquired so great a section
of the British landscape. While such extreme relief may never come to
be necessary, there is no denying that the aggregate power of founda-
tions may become formidable.

To die extent that this power is granted freedom, it can act for good

386 REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE

but also for evil. Further and closer regulation is possible; but it is
possible, also, that regulation would not prevent abuses of this ag-
gregate power, or of sections of it, unless it proceeded so far as to
wholly deprive foundations of independence. Starting with the prem-
ise that foundations are basically desirable, excessive regulation, which
would deprive them virtually of all freedom, might well destroy their
character, their usefulness and their desirability. Therefore, regulatory
measures should be approached with grave caution. We are not pre-
pared at this time even to suggest that further regulation is needed. It
seems essential to us that as scientific a collection and integration of
facts as possible be accomplished before anyone, whether in this Com-
mittee or outside, arrives at any precise conclusions,

We believe, however, that, as the work of the Committee proceeds, it
should be aware of the several basic philosophical and legal problems
involved and of such new ones as may appear from the work. Though
all decisions should be postponed and the investigation approached
with as little bias as is humanly possible, an understanding of some of
the basic philosophic questions which have been directed against foun-
dations, can act as a stimulus to a more intensive, intelligent and
comprehensive investigation, and a more desirable result in the pro-
duction of data of value.

A. Is the foundation socially desirable? A minority of Americans
answers this in the negative; some on the ‘'statist1' basis that the Gov-
ernment should take over all “charitable” functions and that private
giving thus conflicts with this function; others on the ground that foun-
dations have or may acquire too great economic or extra-governmen-
tal power; still others on the ground that individuals should not be
given the privilege of giving public money (to the extent that founda-
tion funds are, in part, tax-free funds and, therefore, the equivalent of
a public grant) as they, idiosyncratically, please; and there are other
objections to the foundation as an institution. But the unquestiona-
ble majority of Americans believes in private “charitable” giving,
in the foundation as a proper medium for such giving, and in the
right of the individual, within wide limits, to be idiosyncratic if he
chooses.

B. If foundations are desirable , should limitations be put upon their
use? In this area there are all sorts of proposals. The tax law has al-
ready created some limitations of which you are, no doubt, aware.

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE 387

Under Section 3813 of the Internal Revenue Code, certain transac-
tions are prohibited — in general, transactions tending to benefit the
donor of the foundation, or his family, or controlled trusts or corpo-
rations. “Unrelated income” is made taxable, as well as “Supplement
U Income” — the objective being to prevent the use of foundations for
indirect business or personal purposes. Unreasonable accumulations
of income are prohibited. And foundations may not engage in certain
activities, of which subversion and political activity are the most im-
portant.

It is possible that extensions of these restrictions may become ad-
visable. It is also possible that no further restrictions are needed. The
disclosed facts should determine. Proposals range all the way from (a)
restricting foundation purposes and donations to certain direct
fields, such as religion, medicine, health and education, to (b) restrict-
ing them to either direct donations without constricted or directed
purpose or to what might be called operating, as against donating,
foundations. “Proposal (b)” is sometimes based on a dislike of the
theory that because Government is more and more taking over the
functions of security for the individual, foundation funds should be
applied as “risk capital” to social experimentation.

Another type of restriction which is sometimes suggested is that the
individual (or the individual foundation) should have considerable
freedom, considerable discretion, but that there should be limitations
or supervision to prevent the waste of money which is admittedly (all
the major foundations seem to admit it) a public trust, through ap-
plication to objectives which are deemed unsocial, undesirable or
capricious.

Many more suggestions for restriction have been made. Another is
that the rule against perpetuities, or some other limitation on the life
of a purely donative foundation, should be applied to prevent a per-
petuation of the fund. Still another is that a violation of any of the
restrictions of the tax law should not result merely in a loss of the in-
come tax exemption (the present limit of punishment) but, retroac-
tively, a loss of the initial gift tax or estate tax exemption. We cannot
list all of the suggestions which have been made, but merely wish here
to indicate how varied the critical suggestions for reform have been.

We repeat our opinion that a full discussion of any proposals for
reform should await the facts we disclose; any predisposition to a

388 REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE

remedy may risk serious error. We wish to emphasize our staff theory
that if any remedies are to suggest themselves, it should be because
intelligently and fairly assembled facts prompt them.

C. Control as a basic problem. This brings us to the basic control
problem. We would assume that the Committee would be disposed to
a minimum of Federal control. The rights, duties and responsibilities
of foundations are, in our opinion, primarily matters of state law
with which the Federal government should not interfere unless
grounds of national welfare, strong enough to induce an application
of a broad Federal constitutional theory, should appear. For the mo-
ment, then, the only mechanism of control available to the Congress is
the tax law. Congress has the clear right to place reasonable conditions
upon the privilege of tax exemption. It has done so, as to income tax,
gift tax and estate tax. If amendments to these tax laws come to ap-
pear desirable, it is the province of the Committee on Ways and
Means, as we understand it, to consider such amendments. We con-
ceive our function in part to be to produce the facts upon which
that Committee may, if it chooses, act further. We deem it within our
province to state the facts which have appeared, collate them, and sug-
gest areas of consideration for Ways and Means if the Committee finds
this desirable.

If acute or chronic foundation ailments should appear, the remedies
may not, in every case, be through legislation. A disclosure of the
ailments may, to some extent, induce reform within the ailing founda-
tion itself. And the very statement of the facts may induce the public
to take an interest of a nature to bring about reform through the
force of public opinion,

D. Should further foundations be encouraged 7 This question is put
in the light of the present tax laws which are an invitation to create
foundations. Foundations were formerly almost always created from
an entirely charitable impulse. They are now most frequently created
for reasons basically involving the tax laws, even though the charita-
ble purposes are sincere. Do we want to continue this encouragement,
or go back to permitting foundations as a simple privilege? The an-
swer to this question is again one for Ways and Means, which should
perhaps consider, in the light of our disclosed facts, whether reforms in
the tax law might not be desirable, directed at reducing the pressure
to create foundations. For example, making easier the problem of
liquidating frozen estates (closely held stock cases) to pay death taxes,

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE 389

might well reduce the number of foundations created in the future.
On the other hand, the answer might be that the tax pressure operates
benignly and should not be reduced,

E. Do foundations influence public opinion and is this influence de-
sirablc? This basic $nd vital question could be broken down into
such categories as these:

Education,

Public affairs,

Politics and the theory of government,

Economics.

International affairs,

Labor relations.

Etc.

Recognizing the unquestionably magnificent contributions which
the foundations have made to society in certain areas, we are inclined
to exclude from our studies the application of funds to certain of
these specific areas, notably religion, medicine and health, except
where exceptional reason for a study may exist. An example of an
exception might be a religious organization engaged in anti-Catho-
lie or anti-Semitic activity, or a foundation expending great sums in-
ternationally on medicine or health — this last in connection with the
general question of the extent to which foundations to use, and may be
justified in using, tax free American money abroad.

# # *

The following are specific projects which we have outlined to guide
the staff work. Some overlap, of course, on others.

PROJECT I.

THE COLLECTION OF ACCESSORY MATERIAL
AND MAKING AVAILABLE COLLATERAL
GOVERNMENTAL AND PRIVATE SERVICES.

l, Coordination with Federal committees on subversion for the
purpose of checking existing material on foundations.

a, Secure copies of records and reports of other commit-
tees to establish collateral library.

390 REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE

b. Arrange for access to other materials of such commit-
tees. *

c. Request such committees for foundation leads.

2. Coordination with similar State committees.

a. California Un-American Activities Committee has a
mass of material, including much on foundations and
their penetration of educational institutions.

b. The California Senate Committee on Education (Mr.
Dilworth, Chairman) may have still better material.

c. Contact similar other state committees.

d. Assemble library of reports, etc.

g. Coordination with Attorney General.

a. Get his list of subversive organizations for check pur-
poses and keep up to date.

b. Get leads.

4. Coordination with Internal Revenue.

a. Get its list of foundations.

b. Arrange to keep it up to date.

c. Get access to their statistical material.

d. Get access to their foundation annual reports.

e. Procure their criteria for judging illegal activities
which would deprive a foundation of tax exemption
— for example, definition of political use and propa-
ganda. We are not necessarily bound by such defini-
tions but might start with them.

f. Get leads.

5. Coordination with FBI.

a. Probably very doubtful, but we may get substantial
assistance in checking subversives.

6. Miscellaneous library material.

a. There are organizations which collect data on founda-
tions. We should assemble as much as possible. Exam-
ple, Russell Sage Foundation material. We might so-
licit the foundations to give us whatever material they
may have in the way of studies of foundation work
and their place in society, as well as any plans they
may have for future studies.

7. Assistance from individuals.

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE 391

a. Make check list of individuals who may have material
resulting from their own studies of foundations*

b. Make contact with each to secure leads and coopera-
tion.

8. As soon as possible, build up a quick reference file or card file
to save time in cross-checking. Designing a filing system which
could be used in reference work is an allied project.

PROJECT II.

GENERAL DATA.

It is proposed to assemble, classify and sum up facts concerning
the tax-exempt Foundations in the United States since 1918 in
such a manner as will enable the Committee most rapidly and
conveniently to determine, among other things:

a. The extent and nature of their resources.

b. The purposes to which these resources have been de-
voted.

c. The qualifications of those charged with the responsi-
bility of directing their resources toward die achieve-
ment of these purposes.

d. The size, composition and organization of the staffs
maintained to supervise their operations.

e. Operating costs and the relation which they bear to
their total resources.

f. The number and nature of grants made.

g. The number and nature of grants refused.

h. The degree of control which they exercise over the
recipients of such grants.

i. The directional policies and practices relied upon to
insure the effectiveness of these controls.

Broadly speaking, these facts are essential to any effort to pass
judgment upon or appraise the value of an enterprise or a seg-
ment of American wealth. In addition, it is intended that these
facts shall be classified according to Foundations which are dis-
tinguishable from each other because of:

a. Purpose.

b. Size of either endowment or quantity of annual con-
tributions.

392 REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE

c. Nature of investments.

d. Type of organization (i.e., corporate or fiduciary).

e. Methods of operation.

Finally, it is contemplated that, to facilitate the interpretation
of these “findings," the staff will present to the Committee its
own objective summation of the trends which have characterized
such essential aspects of life in the United States since 1918 as
education, politics and finance — drawing for this purpose upon
resources which, in its opinion, can be qualified as authoritative,
objective and unprejudiced.

PROJECT IIL

ANALYSIS OF FORMER HEARINGS.

This should be done by the Research Director himself, or a
top assistant, to determine what material should be amplified
and what subjects should be carried further or integrated with
other projects.

PROJECT IV.

TREATMENT OF QUESTIONNAIRES.

1. Analysis of existing questionnaires.

a. Selection of cases for study.

b. Identification of reasons for study.

c. Determine whether follow-up questionnaire should be
sent; should such be uniform or designed to fit each
case?

d. Follow-through, in some cases, on operation of proj-
ects started by foundations last year.

2. Additional mass questionnaires?

a. Should any be sent?

b. To large, middle or small groups?

c. Should we, by this method or any other, try to show
evidence that a great number of now small founda-
tions are actually vehicles to receive larger funds at
death of donor?

3. Questionnaires to selected list of donees to see what other
foundation grants they have received. Also, to check what
work they have done.

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE 393

PROJECT V ,

DEFINITIONS .

i. In the work of identification of individuals, projects, pur-
poses and operations, we must check against standards. We
shall have to take the risk of determining these standards;
they should be defined as closely in relation to legal precepts
as we can. We can start with Internal Revenue, F.B.I. and
other Committee definitions. It might be wise, in connection
with hearings, to prepare a list of definitions for submission
to prospective witnesses to avoid semantic bogs.

3. Among them are:

a. propaganda.

b. political purposes or uses.

c. socialism.

d. communism.

e. fascism.

f. subversion,

g. slanting.

h. anti-social activity.

i. radicalism.

j. leftism.

k. rightism,

l. lobbying.

m. un-American activity,

etc., etc., etc, (There may be many more.)

PROJECT VL

ADMINISTRATIVE CHECK-UP WHERE THERE

HAVE BEEN DISCLOSED REGRETTABLE AWARDS .

x. To cover cases as to which there has already been testimony,
or as to which we may have new material, and where:

a. There have been subversive grants;

b. There has been political use; or

c. There has been gravely slanted use.

s. A factual presentation in this area would be of great value
exposing:

394 REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE

a. The dangers which deserve the administrative atten-
tion of good foundations;

b. Areas in which remedial legislation by the states might
be desirable; and

c. Areas of consideration for Congress.

3. Except where wicked intention is clear, we take goodwill for
granted and assume that no impropriety was intended.

4. Then — How did it happen? Who was responsible? Why? What
caused such unintended results?

5. This can, in part, be reduced, perhaps, to a somewhat statisti-
cal result. That is, we can list instances in which an improper
award was made for such reasons as:

a. Lack of sufficient investigation or check of the project.

b. Lack of supervision or control in operation.

c. Calculated design at the source of the appointment
(prompting of the appointment, perhaps, by a sub-
versive or extremist on the staff).

d. Lack of security check.

e. Inattention by trustees.

Etc., etc., etc.

6. In cases where an admittedly unfortunate donation was made
and the foundation has expressed regret and asserted that it
would not willingly or knowingly make such an award, should
we not run down the extent to which the foundation has tried
to ascertain whether an error in procedure existed and take
steps to try to prevent a recurrence?

PROJECT VII .

POLITICAL USE.

1. A list should be prepared of foundations which have regis-
tered as lobbyists. In each case, the nature of the lobbying
must be investigated carefully. Some of these cases will be
innocent. Others will be per se violations of the tax exemption
rule.

2. Other cases will appear in which the literature produced is
of a political character or has been used politically.

3. There will be other cases in which though no political litera-
ture is used, the foundation has engaged in politics.

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE 395

4. There is a very difficult area, where the foundation has not
engaged directly in politics but has produced what might be
called "politically slanted" material.

PROJECT VIII.

ROUTINE PROCEDURE WITH FOUNDATIONS WHICH
ARE SUSPECTED OF IDEOLOGICAL “SLANTING.”

1. List of trustees.

2. List of officers.

3. List of administrative officials.

4. Is there an extraordinary preponderance of ideological pro-
ponents, or an effective direction by ideological proponents?

5. Then see if there is a reflection of this preponderance in the
operation:

a. By identity of awards.

b. By dollar value of awards.

c. By identity of donees.

d. By identity of administrators of awards.

e. In each case (a.b.c.d.) collateral material may be
needed for the characterization.

By this means we might show that, when extremists predomi-
nate in control of a foundation, the result is at least a slant to its
operation, with political implications— whether sufficient to re-
sult in exemption loss or not.

Note: There are some instances in which, although there will be
no numerical predominance, it can be shown that the non-
extremists were inactive and that the extremists directed
the show.

Note: Where the correlation between control and result can be
proved and there was a partial use of funds for subversive
purposes, or an administration or use of funds by a sub-
versive, a further tie-in may be possible.

Note: We cannot expect uniformity or stand-pa tishness, We
shall have to define the term "ideological," but we mean
it roughly to cover communism, socialism, fascism, and
other ideologies which tend to change radically our form
of economy or society.

396 REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE

PROJECT IX.

INTERNA TIONA USM.

i. The delicate area is religion. To even question the right to
use foundation money for foreign religious missions, etc., is
dangerous,

3, In many other instances, the wide use of tax free money
abroad is subject to question;

a. On the ground that it is transporting the taxpayer's
money without his consent.

b. On the ground that it has an effect on foreign policy
independent of and sometimes contrary to the official
policy of government. In some cases, it is "meddling/*

g. The problem here is simply to present factual and statistical
information and, upon it, to base the question; Are such
grants justifiable or desirable?

4. A mass questionnaire on this subject by itself might be ad«
visable.

PROJECT X,

INTERLOCKS AND FAVOR1TISMS.

l. Extent to which foundations give money to each other,

a. Extent to which this results in a shifting or ducking
of responsibility.

b. Extent to which this indicates an interlock,

C. Extent to which this indicates an informal control of
foundation operations in general,
cl. Extent to which a trend of political or social character
can be traced to this interlock.

3. Extent of interlocking trusteeships.

a. Interlocks within the boards.

b. Interlocks with the universities.

c. Certain favored universities,

d. Obvious exclusions through such interlocks.

e. Some statistical study of this result,

g. Extent of interlock in foundation officers and administrative
officials.

a. Same breakdown as above (a.b.c.d.e.)

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE 397

b. Probable that most of the mischief takes place at this
level.

4. Markedly favored individual donees.

5. Markedly favored projects.

6. Markedly favored institutional donees.

7. Tracing ideological patterns?

PROJECT XL

CONTROL OF EDUCATION .

1. This subject should be integrated with or partly based on
Project X.

2. Favoring of certain universities and institutions.

3. Interlocks and their part in controlling education and the de-
velopment of educational theories through association with
favored colleges and favored professors.

4. Describe the pattern of control. (It has been suggested that
there is a sort of inner group and associates who act as a self-
perpetuating controlling board — not formally, but by mutual
support.)

5. Difficulty of getting allotments for individuals and organiza-
tions not within the inner group or on its periphery.

6. Extent to which government funds find their way into the
same control (National Science Foundation?).

7. Trace the charge that there was a pattern or plan of Com-
munist and Socialist infiltration into foundations to affect
education, etc.

PROJECT XII.

TAX AND BUSINESS ABUSES.

1. A discussion of the tax uses of foundations is important as a
background to current and future developments. Abuses come
into play through business use when foundations are created
for tax purposes primarily. These deserve mention, at least,
though they are for the eye of Internal Revenue.

2. Some analysis might be made of foundation portfolios and
of the holdings of donors and their families to see whether
control of enterprises takes place indirectly,

398 REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE

3. A general study of the financial import of foundation man-
agement might also be undertaken.

# * #

FOLLOW-UP ON COX COMMITTEES WORK .

In the report of the Cox Committee, a list of criticisms of
foundation operation was given in the form of questions, and
the report gave answers to some of these questions. We under-
stand it to be the position of this Committee that the Cox Com-
mittee had inadequate time to consider these posed questions
with thoroughness. We propose, therefore, to reconsider these
questions and attempt to produce more elaborate material upon
which answers to them can be based, though the Committee may
not choose to give precise answers,

The questions asked by the Cox Committee were these:

i. Have foundation funds been diverted from the purposes es-
tablished by the founders?

а. To what extent have foundations been infiltrated by Com-
munists and Communist sympathizers?

3. Have foundation funds been channeled into the hands of
subversive individuals and organizations, and, if so, to what
extent?

4. Have foundations supported or assisted persons, organiza-
tions, and projects which, if not subversive in the extreme
sense of that word, tend to weaken or discredit the capitalis-
tic system as it exists in the United States and to favor Marx-
ist socialism?

5. Are trustees of foundations absentee landlords who have
delegated their duties and responsibilities to paid employees
of the foundations?

б, Do foundations tend to be controlled by interlocking direc-
torates composed primarily of individuals residing in the
North and Middle-Atlantic States?

7. Through their power to grant and withhold funds, have
foundations tended to shift the center of gravity of colleges
and other institutions to a point outside the institutions
themselves?

8. Have foundations favored internationalism?

REPORT OF COUNSEL TO THE COMMITTEE 399

9. To what extent are foundations spending American money
in foreign countries?

10. Do foundations recognize that they are in the nature of pub-
lic trusts and are, therefore, accountable to the public, or do
they clothe their activities in secrecy and resent and repulse
efforts to learn about them and their activities?

n. Are foundations being used as a device by which the control
of great corporations are kept within the family of the foun-
dation’s founder or creator?

12. To what extent are foundations being used as a device for
avoidance and tax evasion?

Most of the questions are covered in the projects outlined above.

* # #

METHODS .

We intend to produce a record at hearings. Whether these hearings
are to be public or private is the Committee's decision. Some docu-
mentary evidence will be accumulated and introduced; other evidence
will come out of the mouths of witnesses under oath. We hope that
early hearings will not be required. We feel that a great amount of
preliminary research should be finished before, and in preparation
for, hearings. Some of this involves independent study by the staff;
some necessitates conferences with foundation executives; and some
will come to us in the form of material solicited by mail from the
foundations.

# * #

This report to the Committee is, as we have said, intended to be
tentative. We reserve the privilege of amplifying or varying it within
its general import. We fully understand, however, that we are the
servants of the Committee itself and subject entirely to its direction.
Moreover, we welcome whatever cooperation or direction the Com-
mittee members can take the time and trouble to give us.

Ren6 A. Wormser
General Counsel
Arnold T. Koch
Associate Counsel
Norman Dodd
Director of Research

INDEX

Accountability, of foundations, 298 300
Accrediting organizations, 3*6
Achelis, Elizabeth, 34
Adamic, Louis, 17a, 328
Adams, Arthur S., 367
Adler, Mortimer, 173, 258
Advertising Council, The, 326
A.F.L.-C.I.O., 279
Albert, C. B., 202

Alfred P. Sloan Fund, see Sloan Founda-
tion

Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America, 31

American , The (Fast), 171
American Academy of Political and So-
cial Sciences, 74

American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, 97, 205
American Association for the United
Nations, The, 203, 206
American Association of Fund-Raising
Counsel, Inc., 28*29

American Association of International
Conciliation, 205

American Bar Association Journal 116,
*73

American Civil Liberties Union, 296
American Committee for Cultural Free-
dom, 273

American Committee for Democracy and
Intellectual Freedom,

Committee on Textbooks, 160
American Council of Learned Societies,
The, 64, 68, 69, 79, 187, 196, 205,
366

statement filed with Reece Committee,
379

American Council on Education, The,
viii, 64, 69, 76-78, 79, 142, 187, 205,
823 fn., 366, 367

Research Policy Committee, 77
statement filed with Reece Committee,
379

supporters, 76

American Dilemma , An (Myrdal), 1 14-
119, 130,217

American Economic Foundation, 199
American Education Fellowship (for*
merly The Progressive Education
Association), 64, 142, 146 fn„ 153,

>55-156

American Foundation for Political Edu-
cation, The, 204, 326

American Foundations for Social Welfare
(Harrison and Andrews), 22
American Friends Service Committee,
The, 266-267, 326

American Heritage Council, The, 326
American Heritage Foundation, 66
American Heritage Project, 259, 326
American Historical Association, 205,
366

Commission on Social Studies, 146-152,
156, 158, 186, 216, 298
American Labor Education Service, Inc.,

34-35* 64* iQS-^6* so3* *64, 366
American Legion, 274, 277-278, 28g
American Legion Magazine, 278
American Library Association, The, 204,
259* 263, 326

American Peace Society, 206
American Philosophical Society, The, 68
American Political Science Association,
47*53*83* *>4* 181. >82. 196
American Psychological Association, 233
American Soldier , The , 105-1 to, *86
American Statistical Association, 104
"American Way of Business'' (pamphlet),
164

American Youth Commission, The, 148

INDEX 401

Americans for Democratic Action, 296
Andrews, F. Emerson, lx, x, 30, 51, 57,
66-67, 220 ^n-» 2^9- 29°» 297-299
Andrews, T. Colcrnan, 356
Anticapitalism, foundation-supported,
187-188

Anti-Defamation League, 311, 357
Aristotle, 151
Army, U. S„ 77, 1 10

Association for Supervision and Curricu-
lum Development, The, 2 16
Attlee, Clement, 18
Augustine, 231

Awards, annual, granting of, $1, 393*394
Aydelotte, Frank, 201, 202

Bacon, Francis, 229
Bachr, Harry, 208
Baldwin, Roger N., 124
Banned Books (Haight), 275
Barker, Joseph W., 292
Barth, Alan, 275
Baruch, Bernard, 188
Batelle Memorial Institute, 66
Beard, Charles Austin, 210
Beaverbrook, Lord, 18S
Beer, Max, 122

Behavioral Science Fund (Ford), 66, 74,
247'253

''Behavioral sciences,” 83
Bending the Twig (Rudd), 146 fn,, 163
fn.

Benedict, Ruth, 213, 262
Bentley, Elizabeth, 276
Berclson, Bernard, 252
Berle, Adolph A., Jr., 122-123, 280
Berlin, University of, 123
Bernal, J. D., 229

Bibliography on the Communist Prob-
lem in the United Slates, A, 273*
274

Big Business, 52, 188

Bigness, problem of, 51-54

Bill of Rights, 187

Bisson, T. A., 213

Black, Hugo L„ 309-310

Blaine, Mrs. Anita McCormick, 34

Bliven, Bruce, 143

Block, Herb, 275

B'nai B'rith, 76, 311

Bollingen Foundation, 199

Bossard, James H. S., 96, 98

Boston Post, 251

Bowles, Chester, 265, 266

Braden, Sprullle, 212

Brady, Robert A., 188

Brameld, Theodore, 154

Brandeis, Louis D., testimony of, 5-6

Brandon Films, 261
Briggs, Charles W„ 356, 357
testimony of, 44-45, 253-156, 258, 359
Brotherhood of Man (film), 261-262
Browder, Earl, 163, 273
Brown University, 273
Bryson, Lyman, 172
Buchanan, Scott, 280
Budenz, Louis, 168, 276
Building a Science of Society for the
Schools (Rugg), 160 fn.

Building America textbook series, 160-
162, 171, 172

Building for Peace at Home and Abroad
(Stewart), 171
Burdick, Eugene, 280
Business as a System of Power (Brady),
188

Butler, Nicholas Murray, 204
Butterworth, W. Walter, 20*

Byrnes, James F., 1 17

California Senate Un-American Activi-
ties Committee, 183, 390

California, University of, 27* 67, 95, 125,
»49

Carmichael, O. C., 202

Carnegie, Andrew, vil, 58, 139, 188, 202,
204

Carnegie Corporation of New York, viil,
13, 26, 30, 45, 48, 51, 62, 65, 66, 68,
74* 76* 79, 105, 10G, 110, us, 120,
134* *37* 158# 175* 202* 209»

21G, 220, 221, 243, 298, 366
accomplishments of, xiil, 288, 292-293
American Dilemma, An, produced by,
114-iiQ

anticapitahsm book financed by, 188
Citizens Education Project, 169-171
control over education, 139, 142, 151,
153

Cox Committee investigation of, 328,
S31* 332

Institute of Pacific Relations sup-
ported by, 196, 332, 333
Socialist charter for education financed
by, 146-152

statement filed with Reece Commit-
tee, 379

trustees, 152, 210
Untermyer's criticism of, 7
Walsh Commission investigation of,
5* 11

Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 45, 51, 62, 65, 76, 120, 175,
202-203, 204-208, 209, 210, 211,
218-220, 232, 262, 265, 270, 332,
3GG

402 INDEX

Carnegie Endowment (conf.)
attitude toward Reece Committee in-
vestigation, 377
Ford Foundation grant to, 23s
globalism promoted by, 212
importance and power of, 30
Institute of Pacific Relations sup-
ported by, 196, 332

statement filed with Reece Committee,
379

United Nations propaganda, 214, 215
Carnegie Foundation for the Advance-
ment of Teaching, 51, 68, 76, 188
Carnegie Institute of Technology, 249
Carnegie Institution of Washington, 51
Carr, William C., 39-40
Carroll, Thomas H., 285
Casey. Kathryn, 342, 348, 356, 380, 381
Catholic Church, 17, 235
Catholic University, 365
Center for Advanced Study in the Be-
havioral Sciences, 232
Chafee, Zechariah, 234
Challenge , The (film), 262
Chamberlin, William Henry, 287
Charitable trusts, in England, 18-19
Charity, 16-19

Chase, Stuart, 110-113, 143, 151, 171, 233
Chicago Council of American-Soviet
Friendship, 263
Chicago Daily News, 251
Chicago Round Table Broadcasts, 171
Chicago, University of, 34, 48, 67, 89,
142, 164, 168, 249, 251, 252, 264,
286

Citizens Education Project, 169-171
Civil liberties, 233, 234, 260, 271*272, 273,
280

Civil rights, 181, 182, 279, 280
C/dms of Sociology: A Critique of Text-
books (Hobbs), 87, 165
Clark, Evans, 1 12 fn., 143, 213, 262
Clason, C. R., 202
Clement V, Pope, 17
Clement XIV, Pope, 17
Cleveland Council on World Affairs, 219
Cohen, Felix S., 193
Cole, G. D. H., 123

Colegrove, Kenneth, 223, 356, 357, 375
testimony of, 47-49, 67, 69, 115, u6,
129-130, 196, 212

Collectivism, 146-147, 157, 207, 216, 237,

305, 325

Collectivism on the Campus (Root), 89
fn., t65, 168

Collector of Internal Revenue, 36, 356
College attendance, statistics on, 246
Colleges, grants to, recommendation
concerning, 322-323

Collins, Seaborn P., 277, 278
Columbia University, 9, 31, 67, 74, 119,
120, 141 fn., 142, 145, 156, 159,
167, 168, 169, 172, 217, 232, 233,

s»37> *49. 254. 356. 357. 379
Commission on Industrial Relations
(Walsh Commission), 5-14, 19, 29,
141

report, 10, 11-13, 20

Commission on Social Studies, 146-152,
156, 158, 186, 216, 298
Commissioner of Internal Revenue, testi-
mony of, x

Committee to Frame a World Constitu-
tion, 34

Common Cause, 258

Common Sense and The Fifth Amend-
ment (Hook), 274-275
Common, Jolin R., 13
Commonwealth Fund, The, 63, 68, 202
Communism, 174-186, 279, 327, 331-333
Communist Manifesto, 178, 197
Compton, Wilson, 79
Conference Board of Associated Re-
search Councils, 78-79
Conformity and Civil Liberties (Stouffer),

*75

Congressional investigations, difficulties
confronting, 309-310

Congressional Record, 328 fn., 329 fn.,
336 fn., 352

Constitution, U.S., 115, 116-117, 130, 144,
159, 180, 181, 187, 233. 234, 261,
271-272

Cook, Eugene, 116
Cooperative organizations, 325
Corey, Lewis, 123
Corey, Stephen M., 141 fn.

Cornell University, 167, 168, 169, 249
Cottrell, Leonard S., Jr., 107, 109
Council on Foreign Relations, 200, 209,
219

globalism promoted by, 212
Counts, George S., 123, 145, 153
Courtis, Stuart A., 97
Cox, E. E., 328-330, 335, 358
Cox Committee, v, 328-335
creation of, vii, 328, 358
Hearings, 126, 197, 282 fn.
procedure, 338
purpose of, 3
report, 331-334, 398
work of the, 330 335
follow-up on, 398-399
Crusades, 17

"Culture-lag” theory, 293-294, 304
Cummington Story , The (film), 260-261
Currie, Lauchlin, 113

INDEX 403

Daily Worker, 2G1, 273
Dare the School Build a New Social Or •
der (Counts), 155

Daughter# of the American Revolution
(D.A.R.), 289

David, Donald K., 284, 285
Davis, Elmer, 195
Davis, Horace B., 124
Dean, Vera Micheles, 208, 232, 287
Declaration of Independence, 115, 144,
180, 2G1

Defense Department, U. S„ 66, 71

DeHuszar, George, 344, 345

Des Moines Tribune, 31

De Tocqucville, Alexis C., 79

Deutsch, Albert, 103

DeVinney, Leland, 66, 109

DeVoto, Bernard, 357, 358

Dewey, John, 144-145

Dewey Society, see John Dewey Society

Dies Committee, 123

Dilworth Committee, 160-161, 163, 390

Disarm (DID publication), 190

Dobb, Maurice, 122

Dodd, Norman, 341, 342, 351, 354'356'
371-372,380, 399

Dollard, Charles, 65, 74, roG, 110, 112,
113, 117, 118, 150-151, 232, 233
Douglas, Paul, 143, 3G3
Draper, Theodore, 273
Dudbridge, L. A., 65
Due Process of Law Denied (film), 260
Duke Foundation, The, lx, 51

Earl, Ken, 188-189, 190, 193, 357
East European Fund, The, G8, 247
F,astland Committee, 251
Economics and Action (Mend£s-Francc),
215

Edison Foundation Institute, see Thomas
Alva Edison Foundation Institute
Education, foundations and, 139-172
propaganda vs., 32-37
radicalism in, 139-172
Education for International Understand •
ing in American Schools — Sugges-
tions and Recommendations, 216
Edward W, Hazcn Foundation, The, 76
Einstein, Albert, 133
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 347*349
Eisler, Hans, 195, 328
Eislcr, Robert, 123

Ellis L. Phillips Foundation, The, 76
Empiricism, excess of, 323
Encyclopedia Americana, The, 167-168
Encyclopedia Britannica, The, 260
Encyclopedia Britannica Films, 264
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, The ,
119-125, 151, 167

Engels, Friedrich, 197
Erhart Foundation, 199
Ettingcr, Karl, 342, 344, 345*346, 35»
Europe and the UJS. (Dean), 208

Fabianism in Great Britain (McCarran),
143, 3G5

Faceless Informers and Our Schools (Mar-
tin), 275

Facts Forum, 352, 3G7
Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology
(Sorokin), 91 fn., 92, 92 fn., 98 fn.,
99 fn., 199, 242
Fair Deal, 174

Falk Foundation, see Maurice and Laura
Falk Foundation
Farrell, James T., 273
Fascism, 177, 188, 324
Fast, Howard, 171

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 176,
275-276, 390, 393
Field, Frederick Vanderbilt, 172
Fifth Amendment Today , The (Gris-
wold), 274, 378

Film Council of America, 262-263
Fitch, John A., 124
Fletcher, C. Scott, 263-264
Flexner, Abraham, 133
Flick, Friederick, 188
For This We Fought (Chase), 112
Forand, Aime J., 330
Ford, Edscl, xi, 221
Ford, Henry, vii, xi, 221, 236
Ford, Henry, 11, 238, 244, 281-282, 284
Ford Foundation, The, vii, ix, xi, 24, 26,
28, 30, 34, 49, 51-52, 55, G3, 65, 66,
68, 70, 79, 173, 183, 193, 195. .199*
203, 221-287, 290, 293, 357, 366,
878

annual income, 221

attitude toward Reece Committee in-
vestigation, 377
changes of personnel, 291
control over education, 141
Cox Committee investigation of, 331
cultural-lag theory and, 293-294
divisions, 247-248
employees, number of, 49
establishment, date of, 221
globalism promoted by, 212
grants to other foundations, 232, 268
grants to social institutions, 295
history of, 228-247
internationalism and, 265-270
jury-tapping project, 89-90, 95, 250-253
size, 221, 230, 234

statement filed with Reece Committee*
379

404 INDEX

Ford Foundation (conf.)
trustees, 221, 222, 228, 238, 239-247,
250-251, 259, 264-265, 269, 270-271,
281-284, 287, 287 fn., 292
Ford Foundation , The , the Men and the
Millions — An Unauthorized Biog-
raphy (Macdonald), 49 fn., 133,
238 fn., 241, 244 fn., 250 fn., 269 fn.
Ford Fund for Adult Education, The, 76
Ford Motor Company, xi, 55, 228, 244,
245, 264

Ford Motor Company Fund, The, ix, 51
Foreign policy, foundations and, 200-220,
265-270

Foreign Policy Association, 200, 204, 205,
208-209, 219, 232, 287
globalism promoted by, 212
statement filed with Reece Committee,

379

Form 990A, public access to, 315, 347"34®
Fortune magazine, 14, 24, 131
Fosdick, Raymond B., 230
Foundation , The, Its Place in American
Life (Keppel), 19

Foundation for Foreign Affairs, The, lQg
Foundations,

abolishment of, arguments for, 305-306

abuses, prohibited, 319

accomplishments of, xiil, 27, 306-309

accountability of, 298-300

areas in need of investigation, 3^5'3^7

areas of operation, 320-322

bigness of, 51-54

birth rate of, x, 301

bureaucrats of, 48-51, 81, 303

capital gains, 316

capital of, ix, 51

classes of, ix

“collecting/’ abuses by, 314
Communist penetration of, 174‘177^
331-333

corporate, 54-55
proposed restrictions on, 317
Cox Committee investigation of, 328-

335

creation of, motivation in, x, 301
defining. 315

directorates, revolving, proposal for, 318
duration of, proposed limitations on,
3i5-3‘6

education and, >39-172
emphasis on mass research, 131-138
foreign policy and, 200-220, 265-270
foreign use of funds, 325
Form p9oA and, 315, 347*348
globalism promoted by, 206, 211-213
growth of, x

improper business uses of, 14
income accumulation by, 316, 319

incorporation of, 317
interlocks among, 57-82, 135, 302, 396
protection against, 322
Interlocks with government, 211
intermediaries as joint instrument of,
61-63

leftists supplied to government by,
196-199

leftward slant of, 119-129
legal procedure against, initiated by
citizens, 319
lobbying by, 324, 394
loss of exemptions, 317
muckraking influence of, 129-131
number existing in U. S., viii-ix, 51
operating costs, proposed limitations

on, 313-314

political activities of, 323-324, 394-395
power of, 41-56, 254, 302, 303, 307
concentration of, 57-82, 87, 99, 302,
3<M. 322

public directors proposed for, 318
recommendations to, 291-300
reform from within, 313
responsibility, 28-38, 44, 169, 170, 224-
226. 231, 281-284, 298-299, 301
In supporting social change, 38-40
scientism fostered by, 89 90
social significance of, 16-28
Socialist penetration of, 177-184
study of, 3-40

subversion and, 184-186, 305, 317, 324-
325» 327

survival, problem of, 305 307
trustees, 43-51, 57-59, 64, 65, 152, 199,
218, 245, 289-296, 298, 302-303,

307, 3*4» 32b 322» 323- 33 1
removal of, 318
selection of, 318-319
use of, in estate and business planning,
x-xii, 319-320, 397

“venture capital” concept, 29-30, 37,
169,299

waste in selection of projects, 314*3151
321

Frankfurt, University of, 122
Freedom Award Speeches, 275
Freedom, Education and the Fund
(Hutchins), 257
Freedom House, 275
Freedom to Read (film), 274
Freegood, Anne G., 101
Frontiers of Democracy (publication), 156
Fulbright, J. W., 202

Fund for Adult Education, 195, 247, 259-
265

Fund for Asia, 266

Fund for the Advancement of Educa-
tion, 173. 247, 253-259- 283

INDEX 405

objectives, 254-355

Fund for the Republic, 34, 55, 183, 233,
234, *47, *66. *70-281, 288, 290,

. 366,378 ,

achievements in propaganda, 272-276
attitude toward Reece Committee in-
vestigation, 378
capital, 271
purposes, 271, 272

Statement filed with Reece Committee,
379

funds and Foundations (Flexner), 133
Fusilier, Raymond, 118, 119

Gaither, H. Rowan, G5, 221, 228, 230-232,
236, 244, 259
testimony of, a8, 29
Garland Fund, The, 174
Gellhorn, Walter, 31, 379
General Education Board (Rockefeller),
68, 76, 144, 160, 164

statement filed with Reece Committee,
379

Gcngerelli, J. A., 27
George, Ilenry, 34
Gladieux, Bernard L., 379
Globalism, promoted by foundations,
206, 21 1-213, 216
Goals for America (Chase), tti
Goering, Hermann, 188
Goldman, Eric, 280
Good-bye Christ (Hughes), 329
Goodwin, Angicr L., 330, 337, 340, 34*,
361, 362,363, 368-371, 381
Gordon, Walter, 202

Government by Investigation (Barth),

Government in Business (Chase), 111
Grand Inquest (Taylor), 275
Grant Foundation, The, 68, 76
Graves, John Temple, Jr., 143
Graves, Mortimer, 196, 197, 379
Great Books Discussion Groups, 259-263
Great Books Foundation, The, 326
Great Technology (Rugg), 158
Greater Philadelphia Council of
Churches, 229
Grierson, John, 263
Griswold, Dean, 274-275, 378
Group -research projects, 294-295
Guardians of American Education, 159 fn.
Guggenheim fellowships, 201
Guggenheim foundations, ix, 26, 174-175.
202, 282 fn,

Cox Committee investigation of, 328
Gulick, Luther, 172

Haight, Anne Lyon, 275
Hale, R„ go?

Harding College, 172

Hardman, J. B. 123

Harper’s (magazine), 31, ioi, 103, 309,

357

Harriman, Florence J.,,13
Harris, Seymour E., 173-174
Harvard University, 67, 96, 173, 232, 234,
237, 249, 274, 278, 284, 286, 292,

378

Hayek, Frederick A„ 171
Hays, Brooks, 330

Hays, Wayne, 330, 340-377, 380-381
Hazcn Foundation, see Edward W.

Hazen Foundation
Headline Books, 209
Heald, Henry T„ 221-227, 287 f*1-
Henry VIII, King (England), 17
Herring, Pendleton, 66, 70, 91, 94, i8t-
183. 367-368, 376, 378, 379
Hilferding, Rudolf, 233
Hillman, Sidney, 31

Hillman Foundation, The, influence of,

31

Hiss, Alger, 206, 208, 218-219, 33a
Historical Blackout, The (Barnes), 210
Hitler, Adolf, 125, 135
Hobbs, A. H., 86-89, 91, 100, 101, 102,
105, 111, 113, 114, 125, 165-166,

35 1« 356» 359» 375
Hoetzsch, Otta, 123
Hoffman, Hallock, 271 fn.

Hoffman, Paul, 183. 235, 237-239, 263,
266, 268-272, 275, 279, 283, 285
Hofstadter, Richard, 275
Hogben. Lancelot, 229
Hollis, Ernest Victor, 139-140
Holmes, John Haynes, testimony of, 7-8
Hook, Sidney, 275
Hoover, J. Edgar, 181, 182, 183, 251
Hornbeck, S. K., 202

House Committee on Tax Exempt
Foundations, see Special Commit-
tee to Investigate Tax Exempt
Foundations

House Committee on Un-American Ac-
tivities, 117, 251, 261
House I Live In, The (film), 261
Hovland, Carl L, 107, 109
Hughes, Frank, 22*23
Hughes, Langston, 328, 329
Hulle, B. M., 202
Human rights, 234, 261
Humanist Press, 85

Hutchins, Robert, 34, 141 fn., 164, 234,
*35* 237-239, 252. *56*257» 258,
263, 264, 270, 271-272, 27 6,

277, 279. 280, 281, 283, 285, 335,

357

406 INDEX

Hutchins-Luce Commission on Freedom
of the Press, 22

Hutchinson, Ralph Cooper, 229*230

ILO, see International Labor Organiza-
lion

Individual Freedom and Government
Restraints (Gellhorn), 31
Institute of International Education, 205.
326

Institute of International Relations, The,
203-204

Institute of Pacific Relations, The, viii,
45-47, 62, 64, 134, 136, 176, 196,
200, 205, 206, 210*211, 219, 220,

29°* 3^5* 33l> 332-333
as agent of communism, 45*47
globalism promoted by, 212
loss of tax-exempt status, 37, 45
Institute of Philosophical Research, 258
Institutions, tax-exempt, social signif-
icance of, 16-28

Intercollegiate Socialist Society, see
League for Industrial Democracy,
The

Intercultural Publications, Inc., 267
Interlocks, among foundations, 57-82, 135
protection against, 322
Intermediary organizations, as joint in*
strument of several foundations,
61-63, 302

Internal Revenue, Bureau of, 36, 315
Internal Revenue Code, 33, 319
Internal Revenue Service, x, 15, 29, 32,
33. 3*. «• *78. 30I> 3‘9. 3J0* 3*6,
347. ?4«

increase in manpower warranted, 315
International Education Board, 145
International Institute, Teachers Col-
lege, Columbia University, 145
International Labor Organization (ILO),
202

International Ladies Garment Workers
Training Institute, 273
International Ladies Garment Workers*
Union, 195, 262

International Parliamentary Union, 205
International Social Science Research
Council, 217
Internationalism,

Ford Foundation and, 265-270
foundation complex in, 200-204, 304-
305, 396

Inter-University Labor Education Com-
mittee, 265

Investigations, Congressional, difficulties
confronting, 309-310
IPR, see Institute of Pacific Relations
Items (publication), 69, 70, 74, 91, 94, no

Jahoda, Marie, 234
Jaszy, Oskar, 124 fn.

{enner Committee, 261
esuits, 17-18

John and Mary R. Markle Foundation,
The. 68

John Dewey Society, The, 64, 142, 146 fn.
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation,
see Guggenheim foundations
Johns Hopkins University, 25
Johnson, Alvin, 120-122, 125
Johnson, Joseph E., 220
Jones, Mark M.# 126

Journal of the Atomic Scientists, The,
*75

Julius Rosenwald Fund, 68, 175, 295
Cox Committee investigation of, 328,
329

Jury-tapping project, 89-90, 95, 250-253
Justice Department, U.,S., 117

Kallen, Horace M., 124
Kalven, Harry, Jr., 251
Kazakevich, Vladimir D., 168
Kellogg Foundation, 51
Keppel, Frederick P.. 19-20, 48, 119-120,
220

Kept Witness, The (Rovere), 275
Kerr, Clark, 280
Keynes, Lord John M., 113, 126
Kinsey, Alfred C., 32, 74, 94, 100-105, 290,
351

Kirchwey, Freda, 143
Kirk, Grayson, 74
Kirk, Russell, 89 fn,

Klein, Philip, 124
Klineberg, Otto, 217
Knights Templar, 17
Knowles, Mrs. Mary, 275-276
Knudsen, William S., 188
Koch, Arnold T., 341, 346, 347, 349, 353,
855* 367, 368, 380, 399
Kohlberg, Alfred, 46, 331
Konlaht mit Arnerika (Myrdal), 118
Kopronyraos, Constantine, 16
Kruse, William F., 262*263

Labor unions, 325

Lafayette College, 229

Laidler, Harry W., 36, 172, 189, 190, 193,

l95

Lamont, Corliss, 168, 213

Landman, Amos, 276

Lange, Oscar, 164

Lao-Tze, 98

Lardner, John W.# 66

Laski, Harold J„ tax, 149, 186, 213

Lasswell, Harold D.f 52-53, 83-84, 249

Lattimore, Owen, 213, 328

Laura Spclman Rockefeller Memorial,
The, 68

Lawrence, David, 275, 276
Lazarsfeld, Paul, 109, 233, 234, 249
League for Industrial Democracy, The
(formerly the Intercollegiate So-
cialist Society), 35-57, 64. ti»* J43*
159,188-193,195,264,366
purpose, 188

statement filed with Reece Committee,

379

League of Nations, 37, 204

Le Compte, Karl M., 343, 344, 346-347

Lenin, Nikolai, 125, 191, 229

Lerner, Abba P., 164

Lerner, Max, 124, 209

Levi, Eklward H.f 251, 252

Lewis, Fulton, 274

"Liberalism," 80, 81, 130, 163, 179, 237*
239, 279, 288

LID, see League for Industrial Democ-
racy

Life (magazine), 31
Lilly Endowment, 199
Lincoln School, The, 145, 146 fn., 157,
160, 172

Llndeman, Edward C., 20-22, 23, 172
Lobbying, by foundations, 324, 394
London, Tack, 1455
London, university of, 339
Loncrgan, Lucy, 342, 344, 346, 350, 351,

380

Lorwin, Ixjwis L., 122
Los Angeles Times , 279
Lovett, Robert Morss, 123, 143
Lubin, Isador, 143
Luce, Henry R., 280
Lynd, Robert S., 160, 18B

MacArthur, Douglas, 196
Macdonald, Dwight, 49, 133, 238, 241,
243-244* 259, 268-269, 270, 357-358
Macgowan, Kenneth, 143
Makz, Albert, 195, 261
Manly, Basil M., 10, 11
Markle Foundation, see John and Mary
R. Markle Foundation
Marauelte University, 169
Marshall, George C„ 106, 109
Marshall Field Foundation, 174, 175
Marshall Foundation, see Robert Mar-
shall Foundation
Martin, Joseph W., 337, 347
Marx, Karl, 81, 121, 154, 178, 107
Mask for Privilege, A (McWilliams), 171
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), 67
Mauldin, Bill, 108

INDEX 407

Maurice and Laura Falk Foundation,

63, 68

McCarran, Sister Margaret Patricia, 145-
144, 365, 375

McCarran, Pat, 144, 3G5, 375
McCarran Committee, 46, 133, 137 fn.,

332-333
Report, 45 fn.

McCarthy, Joseph R., 233, 277
McGhee, G. C.f 202
McGill University, 165
McNiece, Thomas, 342, 356, 380
McWilliams, Carey, 171
Means, Gardiner C„ 123
Meany, George, 279
Mendiis-France, Pierre, 215
Menninger, William C., 66
Menninger Foundation, 66
Meusel, Alfred, 12^

Michigan, University of, 168
Midwest Residential Seminar on World
Affairs, 203
Millis, Walter, 272

MIT, see Massachusetts Institute of
Technology

Moe, Henry Allen, 202, 282 fn.

Molcy, Raymond, 236, 280-281, 284
Moore, Harriet L„ 168
Morris, Robert, 272

Moscow News (Communist English-lan-
guage newspaper), 172
Moscly, Philip E„ 66
Moulders of the American Mind (Woel-
fel), 154

Mudd, Harvey S., 66
Mudd Foundation, 66
Municipal Research, Bureau of (New
YorkV 12

Murray, John Courtney, 280
Murrow, Edward R., 273
Mussolini, Benito, 125
Myrdal, Alva, 217

Myrdal, Gunnar, 114-119, 130, 151, 154,
217

Myth of the Good and Bad Nations,
The (Wormscr), 339 fn.

National Academy of Sciences, The, 64
National Association of Manufacturers,
188

National Association of Secondary
School Principals, 164
National Better Business Bureau, 314
National Citizens Commission for Pub-
lic Schools, The, 326

National Council for Social Studies, 164,
216

National Council on Parent Education,
142

408 INDEX

National Education Association, 39, 64,
i4*> 145* ‘46 155, 160, 164,

165, 366

statement filed with Reece Committee,

379

United Nations promoted by, 5116*217
National Film Board (Canada), 263
National Planning Board, 72, m, 186,
187

National Research Council, 32, 64, 68,
79, 100 fn.

National Resources Committee, The, 187
National Review, 89 fn., 203, 274, 287
National Science Foundation, 60, 64, 65,

Navy, b. $., 77

NEA, see National Education Assoda*
tion

New Deal, to, 38, 81, in, 113, 150, 151,

New Deal, A (Chase), 111
New Jersey State Teachers College, 207,
208

New Leader The, 274
New Masses, The, 273
New Republic , 120

New School for Social Research, 120, 125,
233

New York Dally News, vil
New York Herald Tribune, v, xli, 208,
269 fn., 275 fn., 277, 280, 290, 355,
*66

New York Journal- American, The, 276
New York Times, The, v, 31, 125, 183,
208, 266, 266 fn., 278, 289, 290,
555* S&6* 380

New York University, 154, 172, 221, 234,
276i 289, *39

New York World Telegram, 141 fn.
New Yorker magazine, 40 fn., 3*7
Newsweek, 236 fn,

Niebuhr, Reinhold, 280
Nobel prize, 31

North Carolina, University of, 67, 249
Northwestern University, 47, 356, 357

O’Donnell, John, vii

Of Human Rights (film), 261

Office of War Information, 195

Oppenheimer, Robert, 273

Order and History (Voegelin), 199

Organization Man , The (Whyte), 24, 131

Orozco, Jos£ C., 125

Osborn, Frederick, 105, 106-107, 109

O’Toole, Donald L., 330

Ottoman Empire, 18

Outlook, The (magazine), 149

Owen, Robert, 178

Packer, Herbert, 276

Pares, Sir Bernard, 167

Parti Socialisle Su&dois, Le (Fusilier), 118

Partisan Review, 108 fn.

Patton, James G„ 172
Pavlov, Ivan P., 114
Payne Fund, The, 76
Peffer, Nathaniel, 213
Pelagian heresy, 231

Pennsylvania, University of, 47 fn., 86*
87*98, 165* 168, 356
Perkins, J. A., 66

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
(Barnes), 210

Pew Memorial Foundation, 51, 199
Pfost, Grade, 337, 341, 359, 361, 364, 381
Phelps Stokes Fund, 175
Philanthropic Foundations (Andrews),
ix, x, 30, 51, 57, 66, 220 fn„ 297
"Philanthropoids," 49*50
Philbrick, Herbert, 275
Phillips Foundation, see Ellis L. Phillips
Foundation

Pioneers Program (Johnson), 121 fn.
Porter, Paul R., 190, 191*192
Potter, William I., 116
Power, of foundations, 41*56
concentration of, 57-82
Prejudice and the Press (Hughes), 22
Price, Don K., 66

Progressive Education (publication), 156
Progressive Education Association, see
American Education Fellowship
Progressive Education Magazine, The,
154

Propaganda, vs. education, 32*37
Proper Study of Mankind, The (Chase),
110-114,233

Pseudo-Conservative Revolt , The (Hof*
stadter), 275

Public Accountability of Foundations
and Charitable Trusts (Taylor),
298

Public Administration Clearing House,
The, 326

Public Affairs Committee, 172, 195
Public Affairs Pamphlets, 171, 172
Pusey, Nathan M., 278*279
Pyle, Ernie, 108

Queens College, 47
Quigley, Hugh, 124

Rabl, Isador I., 280
Radicalism, in education, 139-172
Rand Corporation, The, 65-66, 233, 234,
249

Rayburn, Sam, 337, 341
Rebel Song Book, 195

INDEX 409

Redfield, Robert, 280

Recce, Brazilla Carroll, 146 fn., 288, 289,

335*387

as chairman of Special Committee to
Investigate Tax Exempt Founda-
tions, v, vii, 339*381

as Cox Committee member, 330, 331,
335*336

military decorations, 374 fn,
preface to book, v-vl

Reece Committee, see Special Committee
to Investigate Tax Exempt Foun-
dations

Reference works, sponsored by founda-
tions, 167-1G9
Reformation, 17, 18, 231
Reid, Ogden M., xii
Reid Foundation, The, xil
Religious activities, determination of, 37-
38

Religious organizations, 16-18, 325
Research, mass, emphasis of foundations
on, 131-138, 314

Research Corporation, The, 292, 293
Research on Freedom: Report of Dia-
lectical Discoveries and Construc-
tions, 258

Revolt (publication), 190, 191-192, 193
Rhodes, Cecil, 202

Rhodes Scholarship Fund (Great Brit-
ain), 201-202, 212
globalism promoted by, 212
Rhodes Trust , The, 1903-1953 (Ayde-
lotte), 201

Rich Land, Poor Land (Chase), 171
Richardson Foundation, The, 199
Richter, Curt, 25
Rippey, J. Fred, 48
Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 171
Robert Marshall Foundation, 175
Robert Schaikenbach Foundation, 33-34
Rockefeller, John D„ vii, 58, 139, 144,
145

Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 8-10, 11, 13, 29
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The, ix, 51,
68

Rockefeller Foundation, The, vili, 26, 29,
30. 35 » 5X» 58. 63, 06, 76, 79, 120,

>34» 157* lC7* l69* l75> ao3»
209, 210, 221, 230, 243, 366
accomplishments of, xiii, 288, 292-293
administrative structure reorganized,
290-291

attitude toward Recce Committee in-
vestigation, 308-309

control over education, 139, 142, 151,
»53

Cox Committee investigation of, 328,
33U 33S

foreign projects, 268, 269
globalism advocated by, 206, 212
Institute of Pacific Relations supported
by, 45*47, 62, 196, 210, 290, 332,
333

Kinsey studies supported by, 100, 290
National Research Council's Commit-
tee for research in problems of
sex supported by, 32, 100 fn.
policies, 289, 290
Social Sciences Division, 47 fn.
statement filed with Reece Commit-
tee, 379

Taiping Rebellion study, 136-137
textbooks financed by, 160, 163-165
Untermycris criticism of, 7
Walsh Commission investigation of, 5,
11, 12

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 210
Root, E. Merrill, 89 fn., 165, 168
Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel, 251
Rosenwald Fund, see Julius Rosenwald
Fund

Rovere, Richard H., 275
Rowe, David N., 45-46, 61 , 62-63, 73- 7®»
92, 127, 1 35-238* 175- 3»4> 356/ 357
Rudd, Augustin C„ 146 in., 165 fn.
Rugg, Harold, 156, 157-160
Ruml, Beardsley, 19
Rusk, Dean, 29, 58, 202, 289, 290, 309
Russell, John M., 109
Russell Sage Foundation, The, ix, 22,
63, 68, 118, 120, 175, 817, 22 1, 233,
289 fn., 390

Ford Foundation grant to, 232
recommendations of, 15, 29
Untermyer's criticism of, 7
Russky Golos, 168
Rutgers University, 168

Sacco, Nicola, 163

Sage Foundation, see Russell Sage Foun-
dation

Salt, Waldo, 260

San Francisco Board of Education, 157
Sanford, Fillmore, 233
Santa Anita Foundation, 66
Sargent, Aaron, 143-145, *49» 160-161,
357* 358'36o, 364*366, 368, 375
Sauer, Carl O., 95-96, 125
Schaikenbach Foundation, see Robert
Schaikenbach Foundation
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 108-109
Schultz, Henry Edward, 357
Schunnan, Jacob G., 12
Science and Society (magazine), 154,
168

"Science as Morality" (pamphlet), 85

410 INDEX

Scientism, foundation -fostered, 89-90, 304
Scopes trial, 163

Scripps Foundation for Research in Pop*
ulation Problems, The, 68
Senate Committee on Interstate and For-
eign Commerce,

subcommittee's investigation of Tex-
tron Corp. operations, 14
Senate Internal Security Committee, 143,
333

Sessions, John A., *73-274
Sibley, Ethridge, 133
Simpson, George, 85-86
Simpson, Richard M., 330
Sinclair, Upton, 143
Sloan Foundation, 76, 79
management reorganized, 17$
projects, 171-172
purpose, 171
trustees, 172

Smal-Stocki, Roman, 169
Smith, Howard W., 329
Social Chaos and the Public Mind
(Rugg), 158

"Social engineers," 90-100, 106, 304
Social Frontier, The (publication), 156
Social Problems and Scientism (Hobbs),
89 fn., 91, 101

Social-science activities, interlock in
financing of, 63-67
Social Science Foundation, The, 203
Social Science Research Council, The,
viii, 60, 64, 66, 67-76, 77-79,
89* 9*> 94* 96* no, 112, ng. 125,
*43* !46, 160* 181, 182, 187,
*99* s‘7» 243, 250, 290, 322,

S6&* 367* 378

American Soldier, The (book), 105-110

management, 71

power of, 63, 68, 72

purposes, 95

supporters, 68

Social sciences, politics in the, 83-86
Socialism, 143, 145, 146 fn., 150, 160.
162, 171, 177-184, 188-195, 198,
199, 208, *09, 305, 34Q
Sombart, Werner, 122
Somervell, Brehon, 106
Songs Useful for Workers * Groups , 195
Sorokin, Pitirira A., 91 fn., 92, 92 fn„

•93* 96* 97* 99* *99* *4*

Soule, George, 124

Southern California, University of, 168
Southern Regional Council, 276
Soviet Uussia (pro-Cora mu niat publica-
tion), 168

Special Committee to Investigate Tax
Exempt Foundations, 328-383
allegations against, 381-383

appropriation for, 343-345
concluding observations, 305-312
counsel,

appointment of, 341
removed and restored to payroll,
346-347

creation of, vii, 335-337
"Dodd Report," 354-356, 371-372
emphasis of, on need for further
study, 5, 289, 305, 307-309, 311,
325

findings, 301-305
Hays' conduct, 347-377
hearings,

preparation for, 338-339, 399
results due to, xv
limitations of, xiil, xlv, 343
mandate to, 337-338
members, 337, 339-341
methods, 399

obstacles faced by, v, vii, 303, 308, 309-

3ll» 333* 338* 343*37^ 38i-383
purpose of, 3, 337

recommendations and suggestions, 72,

*89, 3*3-327

report, 380-381
major, 380-381
minor, 381

report of Counsel to, 311-312, 342, 384*

399

staff,

appointment of, 341-342
released, 380

statements bv foundations, 377-380
witnesses, 356-366
Sprier, Hans, 66, 232, 233, 234
Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, see
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Me-
morial

Stalin, Joseph, 32, 125, 180
Stalin prize, 31

Standard Oil of New Jersey, 111
Stanford University, 142, 249, 276
Starr, Mark, 172, 195

State Department, U. S., 30, 47, 77, 201,
202, 204, 209, 214, 217, 2G8
Slates' Rights, 234,317
Stephan, Frederick F„ 66
Stern, Bernhard J., 124
Stettinius, Edward, 188
Stewart, Maxwell, 171, 172
Stouffer, Samuel A., 107, 109, 234, 249,
275, 285-286

Strong, Anna Louise, 213
Studebaker Corporation, 264
Subversion, foundations and, 184-186,

305. 3*7* 324-325* 327.33s
Sugannan, Norman, 37 fn., 356 357
Supreme Court, see U. S. Supreme Cour;

INDEX 411

Swarthmore College, 168
Syracuse University, 168

Taft, Philip, 273

Taiping Rebellion project, 137, 314
Taylor, Eleanor, 298
Taylor, Telford, 275
Tead, Ordway, 172

Temporary National Economic Com-
mittee (TNEC), 10, 339
Textbooks, collectivist, 156-167
Textron Corporation, investigation of,
15-16

Thomas, Norman, 159, 189
Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Insti-
tute, 293

TNEC, see Temporary National Eco-
nomic Committee

To Insure the End of Our Hysteria
(HofTman), 275
Totalitarianism, 94, 154
“Toward Nationalization of Industry/’
193

Trotsky, Leon, 177, 191
Truman, Harry S., 195, 251, 267
Trustees, foundation, 43-51, 57-59 , G4,
65, 152, 199, 218, 245, 289-296, 298,
302*303. 3°7. 3M. 321* 322. 323.
33*

removal of, 318
selection of, 318-319
Trusts, charitable, in England, 18-19
20th Century Capitalist Revolution, The
(Berle), 123

Twentieth Century Fund, The, 68, 74,
111, 112, 112 £n., 213, 262
loss of tax-exempt status, 37

Undermining Our Republic, 159 fn.
Unemployed , The (LID publication),
190

UNESCO, see United Nations Educa-
tional, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization
Unions, labor, 325
United Automobile Workers, 261
United Nations, 30, 119, 164, 200, 202,
203, 213, 218, 219, 241, 260, 261,
269

propaganda for, 214-216, 305
United Nations Association, 200
globalism promoted by, 212
United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization, 195,
215, 217, 263

United Productions of America, 261
United States Advisory Commission on
Educational Exchange, 195
U. S. Chamber of Commerce, 203

U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 36
U. S. Information Service, 274
U. S, News {? World Report, 117, 309
U. S. Steel Corporation, 6
U. S. Supreme Court, 52, 116-117, >54
Universities, grants to, recommendation
concerning, 322-323
See also names of universities
Untermyer, Samuel, 6-7
Up Front (Mauldin), 108
USSR (textbook), 108-169

Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 163
Vassar College, 208

“Venture capital” theory, 29, 30, 37, 169,
299

Vincent, John Carter, 204
Voegelin, Eric, 199
Volker Fund, igg
Von Mises, Ludwig, 145

Wall Street Journal, 237, 253, 282
Walsh, Frank I\, 6, g, 23
Walsh, Warren S„ 168
Walsh Commission, see Commission on
Industrial Relations
War and Peace Studies, The, 209
War Department, U. S., 110, 213, 286
Warning Against Peace Optimism (Myr-
dal), 1 18

Warren, Robert Fenn, 31
Washington Post-Times Herald, v, 275,
355* 366

Washington, University of, 168

Watkins, Arthur V., 135, 136

Watkins, Myron W., 123-124

Wealth and Culture (Lindeman), 20

Webbink, Paul, 69

Welch, Joseph, 233

Weltfish, Gene, 213, 262

Werth, Alexander, 213

White, Harry Dexter, 113, 183

Whitnev Foundation, see William C.

Whitney Foundation
Who " Collaborated " with Russia (Wil-
len), 275
Whyte, L. L., 25

Whyte, William H„ Jr., 24-27, 131
Wilien, Paul, 275

William C. Whitney Foundation, 175
Ford Foundation grant to, 232
Williams, C. Dickerman, 274
Williams, Clyde, G6
Willits, Joseph H., 47 fn., 370
Willkie, Wendell, 212
Wilson, Woodrow, 210
Wilson Foundation, see Woodrow Wil-
son Foundation

412 INDEX

Wisconsin, University of, 67
With These Hands (film), 26$

Witlmer, Felix, 207, 208, 213
Woelfel, Norman, 154*155
Wolcott, Jesse, 337, 340, 361-364, 371,
381

Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 206
Woodward, Robert Burns, 292, 293
World Affairs Council (San Francisco),
219

World Calendar Association, 34
World of the Great Powers (Lerner),
209

World Peace Federation, 206
loss of tax-exempt status, 37
Wormser, Ren£ A., vi
appointment as Reece Committee
counsel, 341

Hays' misstatements concerning recom-

mendations of, regarding commit-
tee procedure, 352*354
removed and reinstated oil Reece
Committee payroll, 346-347
Report of counsel to the Committee on
proposed objectives and methods
of investigation, 311-312, 342, 384-

Wright,*David McCord, 165

Yale Executive Committee on Interna-
tional Relations, 46

Yale University, 52, 67, 137, 168, 249,
356, 357

Young, Donald, 69, 109, no, 112, 113,
118, 217,233

Zimmerman, Carle C,, 96

FOUNDATIONS: THEIR POWER
AND INFLUENCE

By Rene A. Wormser

This is a searching analysis of some of America’s most powerful tax-exempt
foundations, their actions as opposed to their stated purpose’s, the
interlocking groups of men who run them, their influence on the country at

large.

The author, as counsel to the Reece Committee which investigated
foundations for the last Republican Congress, gained a unique insight into the
inner workings of the various Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford-created giants.
He also witnessed the intense and powerful opposition to any investigation of
these multi-billion-dollar public trusts. The Reece investigation was virtually
hamstrung from the start to its early demise- which was aided and abetted by
leading newspaper of the country.

uIt is difficult for the public to understand, ’’writes Mr. Wormser, ’’that some
of the great foundations which have done so much for us in some fields have
acted tragically against the public interest in others, but the facts are there for
the unprejudiced to recognize.

‘The power of the individual foundation giant is enormous. When there is
likemindedness among a group of these giants, which apparently is due to the
existence of a closely knit group of professional administrators in the social
science field, the power is magnified hugely. When such foundations do
good, they justify the tax-exempt status which the people grant them. When
they do harm, it can be immense harm - there is virtually no counterforce to
oppose them.”

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rene A. Wormser is a California by birth and a New Yorker by education
and training. Estate planning is one of the fields in which he has specialized
during his thirty-eight years of law pratice. He is the senior member of the
New York law firm of Myles, Wormser & Koch. He was for years the
coordinator of a coutse in estate planning at New Yoyk University Institue on
Federal Taxation. He is currently chairmen of the Advanced Estate Planning
courses of The Practicing Law Institue. He has lectured frequently to bar
associations and other professional and lay groups on estate planning and is
recognized as one of the foremost authorities on the subject. He is the author
of three books on this subject: Your Will - and What to Do About It (Simon
and Schuster). The Theroy and Practice of Estate Planning (Callaghan &

Co.) and Personal Estate Planning in a Changing World (Simon and
Schuster). He is also the author of a book on International law, Collection of
International War Damage Claims, Published by Alexander Publishing
Company, and of The Law - “The Story of Lawmakers, and the Law We
Have Lived By, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day,” published by
Simon and Schuster, and a book on foreign policy. The Myth of the Good and
Bad nations, published by Henery Regnery.

ISBN 0-925591-28-9

SBN 9780945001096

780945 0010

96

9